The $190 thread linking the elusive Tom Cruise with half of Hollywood's elite

Tom Cruise may only be a superspy on-screen, but it's safe to say the world knows more about Ethan Hunt's personal life than that of the real-life man who plays him.

Really, truly think about the facts you can confidently spew about the star, aside from the obvious (he , , his nickname is 'TC'and he will, if it kills him, ).

We're not talking about his high-profile former marriages to Mimi Rogers, Nicole Kidman or Katie Holmes (all of which ended when they were aged 33), nor the children from them, nor the connection he has to Scientology.

The last in-depth interview he gave to a journalist (no, it wasn't the infamous 60 Minutes sit-down with Peter Overton) was in 2012, to Playboy.

In it, the now-62-year-old described his then-wife Holmes as "an extraordinary person" who had a "wonderful" clothing line, whom he enjoyed "creating romantic dinners" for.

We don't even know which country he lives in.

The one solid sliver of personal information we can reliably keep on the index-card-sized list of intimate factoids we know about Cruise is this – each year, around Christmas, he ships out a Bundt cake, as a gift, to a select group of recipients.

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What is the famous Tom Cruise cake?

This Bundt cake has become famous throughout Hollywood, though Cruise hasn't spoken about it himself. What we know about the cake has come from its A-list recipients.

It's understood Cruise discovered it after Holmes was introduced to it by the late Diane Keaton, with whom she was filming Mad Money at the time.

From then on, each year at Christmas, Cruise sends "hundreds of coconut cakes to friends, fellow celebrities, and sometimes random people, usually with a small note attached," according to SFGATE.

Specifically, Cruise sends hundreds of the White Chocolate Coconut Bundt Cake made by Doan's Bakery, a family-owned shop in Woodland Hills, California.

Each cake costs roughly $US125.95 (approx. $194.28), and is understood to be made with cream cheese frosting, toasted coconut flakes, and include white chocolate chunks.

Doan's Bakery's White Chocolate Coconut Bundt Cake is, as Brooke Shields has previously lamented, simply "the best cake".

Shields – with whom Cruise has a controversial past – was "on the list for a while" but no longer receives the cake.

"I had a good 10-year run, and I got the coconut cake every year, which I was very happy [about]," she told People in April 2023.

"I want to get back on that cake list. It's the best cake. Tom, I need to be back on the cake list!"

Who gets the Tom Cruise cake?

Shields may no longer hold a coveted spot on the cake mailing list, but a myriad of other celebrities do.

In fact, Kirsten Dunst – with whom Cruise worked on Interview with the Vampire in 1994 – confirmed this week that she's still made the cut.

The Civil War star's husband Jesse Plemons – who co-starred with Cruise on American Made in 2017 – also gets the cake, so as Dunst told Entertainment Tonight, the couple "double[s] up on our cakes."

It's understood the Tom Cruise cake recipient list also includes:

• Rosie O'Donnell
• Renée Zellweger
• Jay Ellis
• Cary Elwes
• Tom Hanks
• Angela Bassett and husband Courtney B. Vance
• Elle Fanning and Dakota Fanning
• Jimmy Fallon
• Henry Cavill
• Jon Hamm
• Miles Teller
• Cobie Smulders
• Graham Norton
• Glen Powell
• Gayle King

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