14 DAY TRIAL // As the whole Scientology debate continues to be just as strong as ever, with both sides bringing powerful arguments, one of its most prominent figures is also doing his best to keep talk about the cult in the spotlight. Tom Cruise, follower of Scientology, said that it was one of the techniques the Church uses that helped him overcome his early-years dyslexia.
The actor, now still on a promotional tour for his latest film, the war drama “Valkyrie,” is featured in the Spanish magazine XL Semanal, along with the lengthy interview. It is in this interview that the actor opens up about his early years and how Scientology literally came to his rescue, the Huffington Post points out. For the record, no transcript of what Cruise said in English during the interview was made available.
According to the aforementioned source, Cruise said “he was diagnosed with the learning disability when he was 7 years old. Cruise said he was often anxious, frustrated and bored as a youth and couldn't concentrate in class.” Moreover, the Post informs that the actor described himself as “functionally illiterate when he graduated from school in 1980,” only to learn “to read perfectly as an adult through Scientology technology.”
Despite the many scientific studies that have repeatedly discredited the so-called educational values and pretenses of Scientology, Tom Cruise is just one of its many first-class members who stick by it. Then again, this attitude is precisely the one that got him under heavy fire more than once, both from film critics and the industry at large, and from the general public in general.
Speaking of backing up the cult no matter what, just the other day, Tom told Matt Lauer on the “Today Show” that he was sorry for his Scientology related (and anti-psychiatry) rant from 2005, promising to tone down on the “rhetoric” in the future. “I’m just here to entertain people,” Cruise concluded by saying, reminding everybody of the first thing that brought him into the public attention and that had been overlooked for the past few years: his acting.