Just last week, we discussed a random update about the celebrity daughter we’ve always known as Suri Cruise. Suri was born in April 2006, and the first six years of her life were spent with both of her parents, Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise. Then in 2012, Katie escaped, filed for divorce and managed to extricate herself and Suri from Tom and his cult. It’s generally believed that Tom basically has had nothing to do with Katie and Suri ever since. Katie took her divorce settlement and bought a place in New York, and she raised Suri in the city. We got periodic updates over the years regarding Tom’s lack of involvement in raising Suri, and in 2024, we heard that Suri dropped the name “Cruise” during her high school graduation. She’s about to head into her third year at Carnegie Mellon, where she’s majoring in Theater, and she’s spending the summer doing local theater (in Pittsburgh) and performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Well, it turns out that Suri has legally changed her name. She’s officially Suri Noelle.
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ daughter Suri has legally dropped her father’s last name.
The 20-year-old college student legally changed her last name to Noelle from Cruise, according to the voter registration records obtained by PEOPLE. Page Six was first to report the news.
Suri currently attends Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and registered to vote in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania during her freshman year in October 2024. Her registration reads Suri Noelle. Noelle is also Holmes’ middle name.
Cruise and Holmes welcomed Suri in April 2006, married in November 2006, and divorced in 2012.
Months before Suri registered to vote as Suri Noelle, she used the name for her high school graduation in June 2024. That same weekend, Cruise was seen attending Taylor Swift’s Eras tour at London’s Wembley Stadium.
Two months later, in celebration of her daughter’s accomplishment, Holmes made rare comments about Suri while speaking to Town & Country. “I’m proud of my daughter. Of course, I will miss the close proximity, but I’m really proud of her and I’m happy,” the proud mom told the outlet, adding, “I remember being this age, this time of beginnings. It’s exciting to learn about yourself, and I loved that time, so it makes me happy to think about it like that.”
It’s crazy that the two biggest “celebrity babies” of 2006 ended up dropping their father’s surname and going no-contact with their deadbeat dads. Shiloh Jolie and Suri Noelle are icons! I would assume that Suri, like Shiloh, probably waited until after her 18th birthday to legally change her name. As with Shiloh, I understand why Suri did this. Suri has not had any kind of relationship with Tom since, what? 2012-13? She doesn’t know the man, why would she carry his name? Incidentally, “Cruise” started out as Tom’s stage name anyway. His birth name was Thomas Cruise Mapother IV. Like Suri, Tom uses his middle name as his surname.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.
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- Suri Cruise looks stylish in a white tank and paisley skirt as she is spotted walking in Brooklyn Featuring: Suri Cruise Where: New York City, New York, United States When: 09 Jul 2025 Credit: Elder Ordonez/INSTARimages
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- New York, NY – Katie Holmes’ ever-growing daughter, Suri Cruise, 16, wears a white dress and blue Converse sneakers for a morning stroll in New York City. Pictured: Suri Cruise BACKGRID USA 20 JULY 2022 BYLINE MUST READ: Robert O’Neil/Backgrid / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- New York, NY – Katie Holmes’ ever-growing daughter, Suri Cruise, 16, wears a white dress and blue Converse sneakers for a morning stroll in New York City. Pictured: Suri Cruise BACKGRID USA 20 JULY 2022 BYLINE MUST READ: Robert O’Neil/Backgrid / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- New York City, NY – Suri Cruise, marking her 18th birthday with a walk through NYC streets, faces a new chapter where she can legally share her personal experiences. Despite a public childhood and the complexities of her family dynamics, she steps into adulthood ready to openly discuss her journey and the absence of her father, Tom Cruise, due to his Scientology ties. Pictured: Suri Cruise BACKGRID USA 18 APRIL 2024 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- New York, NY – Katie Holmes enjoys a relaxed stroll with her daughter, Suri Cruise, after a supermarket run in New York City. The mother-daughter duo appeared to be enjoying their day out. Pictured: Katie Holmes, Suri Cruise BACKGRID USA 17 OCTOBER 2024 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- New York, NY – Katie Holmes enjoys a relaxed stroll with her daughter, Suri Cruise, after a supermarket run in New York City. The mother-daughter duo appeared to be enjoying their day out. Pictured: Katie Holmes, Suri Cruise BACKGRID USA 17 OCTOBER 2024 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- Suri Cruise spotted grabbing a coffee in Brooklyn ahead of Thanksgiving. Suri is home from college for the holidays and is spending time with her mom Katie Homes Featuring: Suri Cruise Where: Brooklyn, New York, United States When: 27 Nov 2024 Credit: Elder Ordonez/INSTARimages
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- Suri Cruise looks stylish in a white tank and paisley skirt as she is spotted walking in Brooklyn Featuring: Suri Cruise Where: New York City, New York, United States When: 09 Jul 2025 Credit: Elder Ordonez/INSTARimages
Lovely young woman on her journey to find herself and her place. I’m glad she has the support and love from her mother and others to do so. I am also pleased those photos show what looks like a normal college student, not Hollywood made up, not scary thin, not anything but a young person doing her thing. Good for her and good for Katie. The earliest moments of her breaking free must have been so scary and uncertain.
It’s wild that he just hasn’t seen his kid in 13 or 14 years. The only difference between him and Brad Pitt, unless I am missing background gossip is he’s not targeting her mother. He seems to just be pretending that 2004 until 2012 didn’t happen. He just never even mentions her. I don’t know if that may have been part of their divorce agreement, or if that’s part of Scientology, but it’s very weird.
I find Tom’s situation confusing. I feel Scientology has something on him, and he doesn’t have the internal strength to get out. Or he’s been brainwashed to the point of no return. Their level of influence on him is all-encompassing and despite being laser focused and disciplined, maybe he doesn’t have the kind of mind that would enable him to get out of a cult.
I don’t know what influence they have on his relationship with Suri. But when I see a Scientology building, i run in the other direction. So I feel his situation is somewhat more complex in untangling than Brad’s.
It kind of makes me wonder if he sacrificed himself to get her out. Like he was willing to let them take him further in if they let her out.
I completely agree with you. I have no idea what happened here, but I feel that Tom was instructed to erase Suri from his life. Whether he is truly brainwashed and feared he would be punished in some horrible way in the afterlife or he is just unable to to stand up to his Scientology handlers because they have something on him, I don’t know. I will say that knowing shunned Mormons and a friend whose family is a part of a fundamentalist break-off “Christian” group, the belief that you will be punished in eternity, that your faith is being tested if you don’t follow the requirements to “shun” is very, very real. Recognizing that people actually believe in these ideologies complicates things. I do not know enough about what Scientology actually believes (you will not be able to transform into some type of higher life form?), but I do know that the real belief that by not following a “rule”, you will be cast to hell for eternity, not allowed into heaven, that you will not be “saved” when Jesus returns is enough to make people do things that make no sense to those who don’t share those beliefs. But, for them, it is very real. So, it’s complicated…Again, no idea what Cruise’s situation is, but I have a lot of empathy for everyone raised in these cults, even those who stay…
Good for her. More people should try this.
Good for her.
I conjecture that CoS minions have clogged People’s comment section to gum up the narrative with talk about parental alienation, and to drag Angelina & Brad into this. This is all to deflect from this situation: Tom abandoned his daughter for a cult. From what meager streams of insider goss I know, Katie actually tried to legally oblige Tom to see Suri at one point. His dumping his own flesh and blood is in no way what she effected, or wanted: it’s the exact opposite.
Over the years Katie has in social media tried to celebrate the importance of family, and at one point in talking about Suri, she described Suri’s way of learning intensely, mastering something and moving on: the exact same thing was said about Tom in an in-depth magazine article about him decades ago. I think as much as Katie could, she’s tried to leave breadcrumbs. Your daughter is here, and she resembles you. And needs you.
This dude fucking sucks and it’s going to get more uncomfortable for him. But again, the three hundred or so comments on the People article are pushing an alienation narrative to deflect. So so so unfair to Katie. He is in a cult that demanded he drop his daughter, and as sober high functioning adult, he chose that.
Sounds like a young woman with a good head on her shoulders – Katie has always been close to her family and I think they were very involved in helping her raise Suri. Her father was the super hero who got his daughter and grand-daughter away from that cult relatively unscathed. What did/does Katie have on Tom?
What does Katie have on Tom? That she was his contract wife. That she had to be interviewed for the role of “Tom Cruise’s wife.” I’ll never forget the celeb gossip story right before they got together that Scarlett Johannsen went running from the room after an interview with Tom Cruise.
That entire relationship was so cringe and off from start to finish.
There was also weird speculation about how Suri was conceived.
Those stories have died down, but back then Tom and Katie’s relationship was considered slightly inauthentic.
Maybe there’s a new generation around Suri’s age that’s forgotten that Tom Cruise went through weird periods when people thought different things about him, usually when he’s paired with a woman. A lot of that stuff gets forgotten when he puts out a new movie, because, whether anyone likes to admit it or not, he is really good at his job.
Either its because we never see him with a woman anymore or maybe he’s aged out of being a romantic interest for women, but I think we just don’t talk about his personal relationships anymore. Whenever there is a flicker of a mention of him being with a woman, the word “arrangement” seems to come up again. (I do think his relationship with his first two wives were real though. I definitely think he loved Nicole).
Katie’s dad was instrumental in getting her out. She’s lucky he is a highly skilled lawyer.
This is what I really don’t get about these dudes. They have enough money and enabling minions to make the situation totally painless and friction free if they choose to just be decent. They don’t really have to speak to their former partners at all. They can have pick-ups done by a driver and a personal assistant who’s good with kids (they have several to choose from) or just hire a nanny for those weeks / months. There are highly qualified and lovely people who do all those jobs. They pay fairly well. You’ll have a personal assistant who interviews a few candidates, then you meet one or two, and sign off on the assignment, they come onto your staff, they get paid, they go home at the end of the day. The kids can fly to you or you can fly to them and you can stay in luxury hotels. If you like, fly to the city where they live and book a suite so they can stay with you. I mean. If these deadbeat dads wanted to be involved, they could be involved, without ever seeing the kids’ mothers at all. They could just delegate all back-and-forth about logistics and decisions to lawyers who work for them, anyway. Or assistants. I mean. To have those resources and not develop some ability to cope with the logistics, is to have a serious psychological issue. If this problem were susceptible of rational engagement, it would have been solved long ago.
Tom actually did see her (Suri) for a short time after the divorce. I thought he was going to continually use her as a prop in pap photos forever, but there was a weird gossip article about him playing with her in a hotel pool by Disney world and it kind of called him out on it and suddenly he stopped seeing her which makes it all the weirder actually.
I was remembering the weird photo oops of them like getting on or off a helicopter with Disney stuff, and she was in heels at 6 years old. I couldn’t remember if the photos were pre or post divorce. He’s just so weird. I don’t know what made him decide to disconnect so completely, other than maybe he tried cult alienation tactics on a 6 year old and they didn’t work?
Good for her.
I do wonder why she didn’t take her mom’s name, but I’m sure there is a reason. I just hope she’s happy because that you lady has had a life.
She *did* take her mother’s name, her middle name.
It’s fine if this is really what you want to do, I just hope it doesn’t become a ‘trend’.
I mean he hasn’t seen her in 14 years or something, no reason to carry his name.
“I just hope it doesn’t become a ‘trend’.”
Why? What does it matter to you what *anyone* calls themselves?
honestly I hope dropping the name of a dead beat parent does start to trend. I’m old and it was less common but I wish I had done it.
OMG in that pic where she’s wearing the oversized coat she is Katie’s mini me.
I feel like Katie doesn’t get enough credit for getting out of there and protecting her daughter and I wonder if it’s because people judge her for being with Cruise in the first place. But she was so young and TC was a childhood crush of hers. By all accounts, Cruise is a charismatic guy who undoubtedly love bombed TF out of her and swept her off her feet. I can easily see how she would be taken with him, only to find out the crushing reality that he’s a crazy COS cult member.
Katie is a very strong woman who raised a well-adjusted, level-headed young woman and for that she deserves all the props.
I can’t even believe I know this, but Noelle is Katie’s middle name, not Suri’s. I remember Katie and Tom talking about how they picked Suri and she didn’t have a middle name.
I can’t fathom not having a middle name. How does a kid know if they’re in trouble or not if there is no middle name to shout out? Jane Doe is getting called for dinner. Jane Fawn Doe is in trouble lol.
(all in humor, I know people without middle names)
I don’t have a middle name, none of the women in my family have ever had middle names. I didn’t realize it was uncommon until I got older.
My kids have 2 middle names! How do you honour family without having middle names? 😂 and when I said all 4 names mine knew there was no more fooling around!
Good for her she accomplished two things. Shed that Alien father of hers. And still kept a nod to Katie. With taking Katie’s middle name as her last name. Feels kind of like Nic Cage. Everybody knows he is a Coppola but respect the hustle to try and not nepobaby over it.
I don’t understand why he hasn’t his daughter since the divorce? Please forgive my ignorance, are Scientologists not ‘allowed” to mix with non believers at all? Tom is friendly with Simon Pegg who is definitely not a Scientologists? Not everyone he works with is a Scientologist so why can’t he spend quality with his youngest?
That is correct. They are not allowed to have contact with “suppressive persons” (people who are no longer in the cult). That’s why Nicole Kidman does not have a relationship with her and Tom’s children, Bella and Connor. Those two are still in the cult.
This has been my biggest gripe with CoS, clearly not everyone in the world is a member so why cant they continue friendly relationships? Why do people need to be cut off from their lives when they still have to interact with the rest of the planet!!???
He brings in a lot of money to the organization by being such a huge movie star. They’d lose that money if he couldn’t work with outsiders. That’s my theory.
They probably fear close family members will try to get him out of the cult, which Nicole probably tried to do. Maybe someday we’ll get a book detailing the situations.
They also audit their members.
He’s been the biggest movie star in the world for decades, and he probably feels he has everything to lose if they reveal his “confessions.”
I’m just guessing, but I think they’re allowed to have casual friends who aren’t in the cult, but family members who go against Scientology are called “Suppressive Persons” or something like that. So Katie and Suri would be considered suppressive persons because they’re specifically against Scientology.
Saying Katie bought a house with the divorce settlement is missing some of the best lore and a key piece of how Katie got away. Katie and Tom bought a fancy condo in New York, certainly with Tom’s money. It was put totally in Katie’s name so that she could claim it as a primary residence and they could save a chunk of money on taxes. Katie then did a bunch of work in NYC. Play? Movie? Not remembering, but it put her over the time limit for being a legal resident of New York.
So she then does her ducks in a row bombshell divorce filing in New York. New York, unlike California, has an adversarial divorce court. Katie can file for sole custody of Suri based on her desire not to have her daughter be exposed to Scientology and would likely win. Especially with what happened to Nicole Kidman. Tom would have had a very good case for moving the divorce to California, where he would be much better protected in terms of custody. But, it would have meant admitting that the condo in New York has been put in Katie’s name solely as a way of avoiding taxes. AKA felony tax fraud. Tom, Mr Clean, wasn’t willing to do that, so Katie got her divorce on her terms. I remember one of the accounts quoted someone from her father’s firm saying the Tom and Katie prenup took up a dozen bankers boxes.
Wishing Suri all the best.