Exec says women hate Tom Cruise

The Paramount exec who fired Tom Cruise in August speaks out in the December issue of Vanity Fair about his decision. Sumner Redstone admists his wife Paula who convinced him to sever the relationship, and says, "He was embarrassing the studio. And he was costing us a lot of money.... Paula, like women everywhere, had come to hate him. The truth of the matter is, I did listen to her... His behavior was entirely unacceptable to Paula and to the rest of the world. He didn't just turn one [woman] off. He turned off all women, and a lot of men." The Paramount exec says it was a culmination of Cruise's antics - including the couch-jumping Oprah interview and psychiatry-slamming argument on the Today Show - that turned the tables on the actor's career. "When did I decide [to fire him]? I don't know. When he was on the Today Show? When he was jumping on the couch at Oprah? He changed his handler, you know, to his sister - not a good idea." Redstone thinks Cruise's behavior cost Paramount somewhere between $100 million to $150 million, and that his severing his relationship with the Mission: Impossible actor was a good lesson for Hollywood. "The explosion was good," he says. "It sent a message to the rest of the world that the time of the big star getting all this money is over. And it is! I would like to think that what I did, or what we did, has had a salutary effect on the rest of the industry."

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