Tom Cruise Awarded For Courage
Hollywood star Tom Cruise has won a German film award for his willingness to take risks in his new film “Valkyrie” which details the failed Operation Valkyrie plot to kill Adolf Hitler, media reports on Wednesday.
The “courage” prize was presented during the 59th annual Bambi Awards ceremony in the northern city of Duesseldorf, German, on Thursday, the 29th of November.
The prize committee jury said in a statement that Cruise has pursued brave project which is making an international public familiar with the story that has never before been the theme: the German resistance heroes against the Third Reich.
The film, directed by Bryan Singer and co-starring British actor Kenneth Branagh, is slated for a 2008 release.
In the film, Cruise plays Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a briefcase bomb on July 20, 1944 as Germany was losing the war, and was executed at the Bendlerblock along with his fellow conspirators.
Some resistance to Cruise’s work in “Valkyrie” has come from inside German government ministries. Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung initially said he did not want Cruise to film at the site because the actor is a Scientologist, which some in the German government described as a sect. Despite the Church of Scientology being recognized in the United States as a religious organization the Defence Ministry tried to ban Cruise from filming at the “Bendlerblock” complex in Berlin where the conspirators were executed, on the basis that Cruise is a Scientologist.
It took the filmmakers months of persuasion to convince the German government that allowing Cruise to film at the site would not amount to its desecration but would honor the memory of the resistance heroes.
The ministry relented after the filmmakers agreed to incorporate a scene showing that Germany had emerged from the evil of the Nazi regime to become a fully democratic country. The ministry later relented and allowed Cruise to film at the Bendlerblock and elsewhere in Berlin this autumn.
In Church of Scientology has had to fight discrimination against its members in Europe and this past year won a major court case against the Russian government in the European Court of Human Rights on this issue. Earlier this month, the Church also won a court case in Spain, and is now recognized as a religious organization there as well as in Portugual and Italy.
In his book, The Way To Happiness, L. Ron Hubbard encourages people to respect the religious beliefs of others. “Tolerance is a good cornerstone on which to build human relationships. When one views the slaughter and suffering caused by religious intolerance down all the history of Man and into modern times, one can see that intolerance is a very non-survival activity.”
“Religious tolerance does not mean one cannot express his own beliefs. It does mean that seeking to undermine or attack the religious faith and beliefs of another has always been a short road to trouble.”
This subject is part of a series of public service anouncements that were made by Scientologists. You can watch the one covering religious tolerance here.
Anyone who is interested can also read The Way To Happiness online.
[...] Shoot Themselves in the Foot While Tom Cruise, a well known Scientologist, was receiving a Bambi Award in Germany for the courage he showed in overcoming intense personal attack for seeking to film [...]