US Vanity Fair October 2006 : Tom, Katie & Suri Cruise by Annie Leibovitz

[polka_dot]

They're talking about it on CNN now and apparently Larry King will show all the pictures on his show later tonight.

Wednesday's show

Exclusive: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' baby, Suri, in all of the exclusive Vanity Fair photos. Tune in tonight at 9 p.m. ET, only on "Larry King Live."

http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/larry.king.live​

 

[TheGlassAngel]

Okay, seriously. I've said this many times but their baby is bloody gorgeous and I thought Sean Preston was cute! Actually, Suri's more beautiful than 'cute' SP is adorable, so squeezy

 

[NOE]

^So squeezy

I actually don't think Sean Preston is cute, which I feel bad for saying. But I have a soft place in my heart for that damn Shilo.

 

[TheGlassAngel]

Ack. Shiloh, another gorgy baby.

 

[Zen]

when I looked at one of those pictures earlier posted, I looked at Suri'
eyes. They are shaped exactly like Katie Holmes eyes. More and more I
look at Suri, she looks more and more like Katie to me. How cute!

 

[julesrules815]

almost all babies are cute, i find it stupid that i am getting so excited over a particular baby. i was just as cute when i was a baby!

 

[bluedolphin]

pis from sina.com

cute baby and tom

 

[bluedolphin]

sina.com

 

[bluedolphin]

sina.com

my fav pics~~~

 

[Laska]

^ That is soooo adorable!!! Seriously, she is sooo cuuuute!!! You just wanna squeeze her!

 

[tigerrouge]

It's a beautiful, adorable baby... but it doesn't mean that I'll be buying the magazine. While this exclusive pictorial is bound to shift copies, I personally find something a little too odd about their decision to withhold the sight of this child and then make a media event of her unveiling. I don't want to be a part of that, by handing my money over for the issue, no matter how lovely the images look.

 

[DosViolines]

I nytimes.com

September 7, 2006
Critic's Notebook
A Rich Coat of Gloss on a Trajectory Spiraling Down

By CARYN JAMES

Sometimes the fine print says it all: “Suri’s onesie by Petit Bateau; socks by Baby Dior.” What 5-month-old has a stylist? Or photos taken by Annie Leibovitz?

Just when Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes needed to prove that they were regular human beings and not — as their downwardly spiraling images have it — flakes, Vanity Fair landed on newsstands yesterday with 22 pages of photographs and an interview that accomplish just the opposite. The extravagantly orchestrated photo shoot reveals a media circus masquerading as ordinary life, and speaks to the devil’s bargain some celebrities make with the public.

As Leibovitz photos go, these are not among her best. The magazine cover, with Suri tucked inside her father’s jacket, evokes a famous 70’s photograph of Paul McCartney with his infant daughter tucked in his jacket, taken by his wife, Linda. The derivative picture is shrewdly calculated in a different way, though. Both parents have their eyes down, gazing at Suri, who stares directly at the camera; it’s a photograph that says, “Look, it’s not about us, it’s about her.”

But of course it is entirely about them, with Suri as their beautiful little prop. In a dozen other pretty but ordinary photographs (with another fashion credit for Suri’s dress), many in close-up and one set against the Rocky Mountains, they gaze at her and beam. But these are hardly private moments.

The story, written by Vanity Fair’s features editor, Jane Sarkin, describes how she, Ms. Leibovitz and what she calls “a small crew” (there are credits for hair and makeup people and a stylist) secretly holed up for five days and nights at the 400-acre Cruise estate in Telluride, Colo. They arrived during a family visit that included 15 Holmeses and a gaggle of Cruises, including his mother, sister and the children he and Nicole Kidman adopted when they were married, Isabella and Connor.

There is one family portrait of Isabella, 13, and Connor, 11, with the new parents and baby. That’s another shrewd move; any parent knows you have to include the older children. And there is a 1996 photo, also taken by the trusted Ms. Leibovitz, of Mr. Cruise and the older children. The way those children have been shielded — they haven’t been hidden from the public but haven’t been paraded, either — is admirable, instructive and entirely different from the Suri circus. Parents, even celebrities, who want privacy for their children usually manage to find it.

But if you announce your romance on “Oprah” and your engagement at an international news conference, you can’t complain about press coverage later; that is the compact Mr. Cruise and Ms. Holmes implicitly made with the public. Yet now they’re actually complaining. “It eats away at me because it’s just not O.K.,” Ms. Holmes says in the Vanity Fair interview about the hurtful gossip, ranging from stories that Mr. Cruise bought his own sonogram machine during her pregnancy (“We were followed by paparazzi, and so my doctor had to make house calls,” she explains) to crueler rumors that Suri, who seemed to be hidden away, didn’t actually exist. Ms. Sarkin’s complicit article describes “the prying public eye” and the “scoop-starved public” greedy for Suri images. But who asked anyone to pry other than Suri’s own parents, he laughing maniacally and she giggling endlessly before the cameras? No one really thought Suri was imaginary or some creature from another planet. The press was simply expecting what the Cruise-Holmes publicity machine had conditioned them for: more displays of a family life that only the Cruise camp can possibly see as normal.

Ordinary parents protect their children, as Isabella and Connor seem to have been guarded; that’s an impulse the public can identify with in the celebrity game. Suri’s parents might have gotten more mileage out of releasing a modest family snapshot and leaving it at that, shutting down the media frenzy without inventing a bigger show of their own. A show is clearly what they were looking for, but the entire over-the-top operation — the famous photographer, the photo so hyped it was revealed on Katie Couric’s first newscast as CBS anchor Tuesday — carries a whiff of desperation.

It’s almost as desperate as Mr. Cruise’s recent apology to Brooke Shields (offered just in time for her to mention it on the “Tonight” show) for his public attacks on her use of antidepressants. What he really needs to do is ask his former publicist, Pat Kingsley, to forgive him for firing her and take him back. He needs somebody on his side who can convince the public that he knows the difference between a celebrity photo shoot and real life, whether he actually knows the difference or not.

I have to admit it, Suri is adorable.

 

[Pegged Wrong]

At first I must admit, I was annoyed with the whole, "Where is baby Suri? She must not exist" thing, but I'm so pleased that they waited and there was a wonderful editorial by an amazing and respected photographer. I know they did it this way because they didn't get the bid they were asking for initially, but I think it turned out so nice!

Suri is beatiful!!!

 

[Blanche DuBois]

I don't want it to sound rude or disrespectful
but there is something I never got straight

I remember when tom was married to nicole, everybody knew he couldn't giver her childs, I mean I thought it was something stablished, for me Tom was steril from the beginning

and when i heard they were having a baby...I was like this
can someone explain?

 

[TheGlassAngel]

Don't worry, I thought that was strange too

 

[Blanche DuBois]

Well now I've taken my time to read the whooooooooole thread
and I'm so relieved to see that a lot of people think it can be an adopted child (specially with the asian features)
which is not bad at all, of course, it is a beautiful thing to do an adoption...

but for me Tom is seriously mind screwed,
so it wouldn't surprised me
if he wanted to make everybody believe
that he is not steril by surprisingly having a child with this girl

 

[vanilla fairy]

oooh this is one beautiful baby, i dont see that much of a Tom in her but she's freakin ADORABLE
she looks like doll
but come to think of it, that's one-very lucky girl! not that she's already draped in designers clothing, but she already got a huge fanbase for her upcoming reality show(or whatever celeb kids trend wud be) in ummm, lets say 2022 or so..

 

[scandinavianchic]

Maybe Nicole was the one who was steril?

Well now I've taken my time to read the whooooooooole thread
and I'm so relieved to see that a lot of people think it can be an adopted child (specially with the asian features)
which is not bad at all, of course, it is a beautiful thing to do an adoption...

but for me Tom is seriously mind screwed,
so it wouldn't surprised me
if he wanted to make everybody believe
that he is not steril by surprisingly having a child with this girl

 

[eternitygoddess]

Maybe Nicole was the one who was steril?

No. At the end of Nicole and Tom's divorce, Nicole had a miscarriage which her rep confirmed.

But Suri is very beautiful (as much as it pains me to say it). Shiloh is out of the game.

 

[ShoeGal4Eva]

^okay......if nicole had miscarriage and it was confirmed,doesnt that mean that tom WASNT sterile?