Tom Cruise Gets Annoyed With Matt Lauer's Drug Comments  6/25/05

US TV host Matt Lauer tested Tom Cruise's ire yesterday (24JUN05) on the Today show when he quizzed the famous Scientologist about comments he made recently about antidepressant drugs.

The movie star, who is fervently opposed to all kinds of mind altering drugs, lashed out at actress Brooke Shields in an interview earlier this month (JUN05) for condoning the use of drugs she used to help overcome postpartum depression.

And during an interview to promote his new film War of the Worlds, Cruise fired off at Lauer when the TV host urged him to expand on his comments about drugs and then argued about the benefits of anti-depressants.

Cruise snarled, "You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do.

The interview became more heated when Lauer, who said he knew people who had been helped by the attention-deficit disorder drug Ritalin, disagreed with Cruise about the effects of the drug.

He said, "You're glib. You don't even know what Ritalin is. If you start talking about chemical imbalance, you have to evaluate and read the research papers on how they came up with these theories... That's what I've done."

And Cruise became super-serious when Lauer suggested he knew people who swore by drugs like Ritalin.

The movie star growled, "This is very important issue and you know what, you're here on the Today show to talk about it in a way of saying, `Well, isn't it OK?' and being reasonable about it when you don't know and I do. I think that you should be a little more resposible in knowing what it (Ritalin) is."