Tom Cruise turning 50 as third marriage heads to oblivion

By Maria Puente, USA TODAY

Happy birthday, Tom Cruise. He turns 50 on Tuesday but instead of celebrating, he's filming his latest movie, Oblivion, as his third marriage, to starlet Katie Holmes, is headed straight for oblivion. And she wants to take their daughter Suri with her.

The international paparazzi, ceaseless in their efforts to snap him, Holmes or Suri, 6, now are in overdrive. The latest sneak shot of Cruise since Holmes filed for divorce in New York on Thursday shows him in the passenger seat of a helicopter, wearing aviator sunglasses and a blank expression, as the chopper takes off from Reykjavik, Iceland.

The Daily Mail published the shot on Saturday, along with another blurry pap snap of Cruise filming a scene in his spacesuit costume, which looks like something from TV's ancient Lost in Space. Cruise has been in Iceland in recent weeks filming the sci-fi adventure, co-starring Morgan Freeman. He plays a court-martialed soldier sent to a distant planet to destroy the remains of an alien race. Iceland stands in for the alien planet.

Yet on June 18, People reports, the couple were spotted strolling together in Reykjavik when she visited the set with Suri for Father's Day weekend. Us Weekly says they looked the picture of a happy family dining at a sushi restaurant in the Iceland capital.

Earlier this month, during filming on Oblivion in New York, they were spotted holding hands. He was gushy about her only days ago in an interview with the magazine to promote his new movie now in theaters, Rock of Ages, but reporters noticed she wasn't on the promo tour nor at the premier.

And the Daily Mail claims, with little evidence, that a "last straw" for Holmes was Cruise's Rock promo shot for the cover of W in which he posed barechested with two half-dressed blondes hanging off him. Supposedly she was embarrassed and "speechless" with disgust over the picture.

The gossip websites and blogs have gone gaga over the Cruise/Holmes split, citing the usual anonymous sources. Us Weekly reports Holmes secretly rented a new Manhattan apartment to move into with Suri once the divorce was filed.TMZ, however, says it has documents showing Cruise deeded their NYC apartment to Holmes last year for tax purposes, and now she's using it to prove residency in a state that might be more open to granting her sole legal custody of Suri.

And wacky Perez Hilton points out that Holmes is 33 and Cruise's previous two wives, actresses Nicole Kidman and Mimi Rogers also were 33 when they split up with Cruise. Coincidence? He even claims that 33 represents the spread of positive energy in numerology, which is what Cruise's church, Scientology, preaches. Or something like that.