Suri Cruise Isn't Going By "Cruise" Anymore
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' daughter has quietly made it official: she's dropped her father's last name. Voter registration records reviewed by PEOPLE show the 20-year-old is now legally Suri Noelle.
She's a student at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, where she's studying musical theater and is entering her junior year this fall. She registered to vote in Allegheny County back in October 2024, her freshman year. The paperwork lists her as Suri Noelle, Noelle happens to be her mother's middle name, so this wasn't some random pick.
Honestly, anyone paying close attention already saw this coming. Suri walked at her high school graduation from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in June 2024 under the name Noelle, skipping Cruise entirely. Funny enough, that same weekend, her dad was photographed at Taylor Swift's Eras Tour stop in London.
A couple months later, Holmes talked about the graduation in an interview with Town & Country, and her pride came through pretty clearly. "I'm proud of my daughter," she said. "Of course, I will miss the close proximity, but I'm really proud of her, and I'm happy." She admitted she'd miss having Suri nearby, but said she found herself thinking back on her own version of that age, that stretch of life where everything feels like a beginning. "I remember being this age, this time of beginnings," Holmes said. "It's exciting to learn about yourself, and I loved that time, so it makes me happy to think about it like that."
That wasn't the only narrative Holmes has had to shut down, either. Back in December 2024, she flatly denied a report claiming Suri had come into a trust fund from Cruise at 18. She posted about it herself on Instagram, called it completely false, told the outlet to stop making things up, and closed the post with a simple "enough."
As for the family history: Cruise and Holmes had Suri in April 2006, got married that November, and split in 2012. So Suri's basically grown up entirely inside the spotlight her parents created, even though she's worked hard to stay out of it herself. Cruise has occasionally appeared publicly with his two other children, Connor and Isabella, whom he shares with ex-wife Nicole Kidman, but he's rarely spoken publicly about fatherhood or Suri specifically, and the two haven't been photographed together in several years, fueling long-standing speculation about their relationship.
She hasn't disappeared completely, though. Last August, she was photographed with her mom in New York, the two of them just walking around the city before Holmes headed off to film alongside her old Dawson's Creek costar, Joshua Jackson. Holmes has also woven her daughter into her creative work in subtler ways: her 2023 directorial debut, Rare Objects, which she also starred in, closed with a screen dedicated simply to "Suri," and Suri contributed to the soundtracks of both that film and Holmes' earlier project, Alone Together.
Suri's decision also places her alongside a growing number of celebrity children who've chosen to step back from famous surnames in recent years, including Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's children Shiloh and Vivienne, both of whom have made similar changes to their own last names.
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