Tom Cruise has paid an emotional tribute to his lawyer Bert Fields during a memorial event in Los Angeles during which he explained how they met.
Cruise appeared in a short video address that was broadcast to the stars attending the service in Santa Monica this October.
He explained that they both attended a dinner in London in 1988, organized by actor Dustin Hoffman.
The two spoke about ‘history’ and ‘stories’ before Cruise hired him on the spot to be his lawyer.
Fields, who died in August in his home in California aged 93, ascended the ranks of Hollywood and became a lawyer coveted by the elites of the entertainment industry.
Throughout his career, which spanned almost seven decades, he represented goliaths including Madonna, Warren Beatty, the Beatles, Michael Jackson, John Travolta, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and even Rupert Murdoch.
Tom Cruise on a night out in London in July 2022 nearly 44 years after meeting Fields for the first time in 1998 the night before the Rain Man premiere in the same city
Bert Fields (left), Annette Bening (center) and Dustin Hoffman (right) at a book party for Fields’s book Royal Blood: Richard III and the Mystery of the Princes in Beverley Hills in 1998
When Cruise spoke he referred to his friend and lawyer as the most interesting man in the world and as an adventurer. He talked of his ‘powerful intellect’ and ‘great wit’.
Their first of many dinners together took place in London and was coordinated by Cruise’s Rain Man co-star Hoffman the night before the movie premiered in 1988. The two spoke about history, in which Fields had a keen interest, and shared stories.
‘I’m very grateful for that moment,’ said Cruise.
‘I ended up talking to him the whole evening. He was just the most fascinating person I had ever met.’
For the duration of the dinner Cruise was unsure of Fields’s connection to the group but on finding out that he was Hoffman’s lawyer he requested legal services too.
‘He said absolutely,’ Cruise recounted.
In 2001 Cruise used Fields and the legal system to set the record straight that he was not gay.
He alleged defamation against an erotic wrestler and gay porn actor Chad Slater, 25 at the time, who claimed that his gay affair with the actor had ended his marriage to Nicole Kidman, 33, to whom he had been married since 1990.
In a 2003 judgement Cruise won $10million for the defamatory claim Slater made in a French magazine.
Bert Fields, an attorney who handled many of the entertainment industries biggest cases and developed a reputation for ruthless cross-examinations in court
Celebrity attorney Bert Fields died at the age of 93 in his Malibu home
He was perhaps best known for defending Michael Jackson when the King Of Pop was hit with molestation accusations.
A pugnacious approach and ruthless style of cross-examining witnesses in court when settlement wasn’t viable earned him a legendary reputation.
Fields has a legacy of bringing fearsome action and winning very large awards for his clients. On more than one occasion he came up against Disney.
Fields was friends with Jeffrey Katzenberg whom he represented in action against Disney
Michael Katzenberg, former DreamWorks CEO and before that chairman of Walt Disney Studios from 1984 to 1994, hired him in the early 90s after he was fired by the company.
After a dramatic stint in court in which Fields accused the Disney CEO of calling Katzenberg a ‘little midget’, Disney were humbled into coughing up $250million, which was three times the largest payout the industry had seen prior.
Katzenberg said during the October memorial service that he would often go with Fields to The Grill on the Alley, a classic American steakhouse in San Jose, and pay for the meal, which would frustrate Fields.
However, on the day the $250million settlement was awarded Fields allowed Katzenberg to take him out for dinner.
‘When you’re a winner you go out to dinner,’ Katzenberg recalled Fields telling him during the service, reported the Hollywood Reporter.
Bert Fields photographed in 2009 with his wife Barbara Guggenheim who he married in 1991
With murmurings of that heroic dust-up with Disney echoing through show business he was then hired by Harvey and Bob Weinstein who wanted to separate their film production company Miramax from parent Disney.
In March 2005 a settlement was announced in which Disney would keep the Miramax name as well as its library of 550 films while the Weinsteins would get around $130million to start a new production company.
‘In the entertainment business walking into litigation without Bert Fields is like walking into the Arctic without a jacket,’ Weinstein once told the New York Times.
Fields was also famous for living a lifestyle not dissimilar from many of his client. He would move gracefully between his law office in LA and his home in Malibu in a Bentley Arnage.
Fields was hired by Harvey and Bob Weinstein who wanted to separate their film production company Miramax from parent Disney
Fields and his wife attend the grand opening of Indiana Jones Adventure In Adventureland in 1995
Bert was also a keen author and published multiple books, some under a pseudonym and others under his own name. His third book was a biographical work on Richard III.
His fourth book was an analysis of the Shakespeare authorship question.
He also wrote Destiny about Napoleon and Josephine, a short novel about Shakespeare called Shylock and a biography of Elizabeth I called Gloriana.
‘I love you dearly, I always will,’ said Cruise at the end of his address.