Tom Cruise And Brooke Shields Had Some Very Public Drama

After welcoming her daughter into the world in 2003, Brooke Shields experienced a bout of postpartum depression, a phenomenon that impacts approximately 1 and 10 people who give birth. “I really didn’t want to live anymore,” she wrote in her 2005 book (via WebMD). For Shields, antidepressants and therapy ultimately proved helpful. Tom Cruise, meanwhile, spoke out against the field of psychiatry and the “Blue Lagoon” star’s use of prescription medications.

“Before I was a Scientologist, I never agreed with psychiatry, and then when I started studying the history of psychiatry, I started realizing more and more why I didn’t agree with [it],” the “Top Gun” actor told Matt Lauer in a heated “Today Show” interview. According to Cruise, medication and talk therapy “mask” the underlying problem — instead, he recommended alternatives, like vitamins and exercise. “The thing I’m saying about Brooke [Shields] is that there’s misinformation and she doesn’t understand the history of psychiatry,” Cruise told Lauer. He went so far as to call psychiatric medications “dangerous,” also calling his interviewer “glib.”

Although Cruise disagreed with Shields’ preferred form of mental health care, he explained that he still wanted the best for the former model. “You gotta understand, I really care about Brooke,” he told Matt Lauer. Still, he believes that psychiatry is a “pseudoscience.” The two actors first connected in the early ’80s on the set of “Endless Love.”