Out Rolling Stone Editor Jann Wenner Gaydar Went Blank with Tom Cruise

From the moment he appeared dancing in his underwear in "Risky Business," gay rumors have plagued Tom Cruise. That his breakout role was in the homoerotic action pic "Top Gun" only acerbated the situation. Cruise has married three times (Mimi Rogers, Nicole Kidman and Katie Holmes), each ending in divorce.

But out Rolling Stone magazine co-founder Jann Wenner couldn't put his finger on Cruise's sexuality when he spent time with Cruise for a profile of the actor, reports Page Six. Wenner met Cruise along with Cruise's mother and sister for a guided tour of the Los Angeles Scientology Center. Cruise is an ardent devotee of the religion.

"It seemed he was opening up, but in the end he said nothing; he thoroughly deflects," Wenner writes in his upcoming memoir "Like a Rolling Stone," due out Sept. 13.

You walk away thinking you know the guy, but all you know is that here is a confident and extremely polite man. He wouldn't even reveal whether he was for or against [President George W.] Bush.

"What the f–k is he guarding? Why is he in a super-secretive cult? He is a great talent. He is Super Tom. All his secrecy gave rise to the suspicion that he was gay. I never got a ping on my gaydar," writes Wenner, who is gay, "but gay people persisted in what Bette [Midler] one night called 'swishful thinking.'"

Part of the reason gay rumors have swirled around Cruise is, as Christopher Kelly wrote in Salon in 1999, he has carefully exploited his queer appeal. "(W)hether he realizes it or not, he's grown as an actor by exploiting the very things – a classic face, a perfect body, a predilection toward sexually ambiguous parts – that have also made him a gay icon.

The gay rumors around Cruise came to a head when he divorced Katie Holmes in 2012. Investigating them at the time, Salon wrote: "If there is fire to be found in this great cloud of gay smoke, it would be remarkable. The guy's been A-list famous since 1983, and there has been no public evidence at all, none, to support the rumors. Masseurs have not pressed charges against him; photographs of him kissing other men on the lips on a tarmac have not popped up on the Internet, unlike other movie-star Scientologists we can name. In this day and age, when so many celebrities rise and fall by virtue of a stray tweet, when everyone in greater Los Angeles has a camera phone and thus the capability to catch him in flagrante delicto, it's almost inconceivable that he could be acting on these alleged homoerotic impulses. Either he's straight, or he gives new meaning to the term Cruise control."

Cruise addressed the gay rumors in a Vanity Fair interview in 2013. "First of all, I don't think it's an indictment," he tells me. "But I hadn't heard those rumors till about three months ago myself. . . . I don't know why they say it. I've heard everything from I've cheated on my wife to my wife was there on the set of 'The Firm' because she was pissed off about my love scene on the beach. It's not true, but people are going to say what they want to say."

Asked if a Hollywood actor could come out and still be a huge action star, Cruise replied: "I believe now that anything is possible. Maybe I'm being naïve. But I think that is becoming not a big issue."

What may have started the rumors was when his first wife, Mimi Rogers, went public after their 1990 divorce. They had married in 1987. In a 1993 interview with Playboy, Rogers said that Cruise was "seriously thinking of becoming a monk," which meant he was celibate for a time during their marriage, according to a report earlier this summer on the website Gayety.

"At least for that period of time, it looked as though marriage wouldn't fit into his overall spiritual need. And he thought he had to be celibate to maintain the purity of his instrument. My instrument needed tuning," she said. But, the site added, there were no intimations by Rogers that his disinterest in sex had anything to do with his sexual orientation.

The role that Scientology has played in Cruise's life is enormous. Asked by Vanity Fair, in a question that could have a double-meaning: "How did you stay on the straight and narrow?" Cruise replied: "Quite honestly," he says after some time, "I have been a Scientologist for 15 years."

But did he turn to Scientology, a movement shrouded in secrecy, for help with his sexuality? "As such, some people held onto the belief that Cruise switched to Scientology to find a 'cure' to his alleged 'homosexuality'. But while there have been testimonies from former queer members about their experiences within the church, Cruise, nor anyone close to him, has ever confirmed any theories about his religion and relationship with his sexuality," writes Gayety.

Cruise was also accused by porn star Chad Slater (aka Kyle Bradford) of having an affair, which was said to be the reason for his divorce from second wife Nicole Kidman. "Cruise fought back with a $100 million defamation suit against the porn star. Upon the ruling, which went in favor of Cruise, the actor's lawyer said, "While Cruise thoroughly respects others' rights to follow their own sexual preference, he is not a homosexual and had no relationship of any kind with Kyle Bradford and does not even know him."

Cruise won $10 million in the case, People Magazine reported. "A Los Angeles judge entered the default judgment after Chad Slater – a former "erotic wrestler" also known as Kyle Bradford – admitted that his story was false, lawyer Ricardo Cestero tells Reuters, adding that Cruise, 40, was "very, very pleased with getting this judgment."