Paid fans greeted Tom Cruise in Mumbai?

When Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise landed in Mumbai he was elated to find fans teeming outside the Mumbai airport to greet him. The star smiled and waved at his fans and got inside his car and left for his hotel. Moments later his so called fans were paid by a coordinator for turning up at the airport.

According to a news website, around 200 people were paid Rs 150 for playing the role of screaming fans at the airport when the Hollywood star arrived. A model coordinator had arranged for the junior artists to play the ‘role’ of Tom’s Indian fans.

Funnily enough, most of them had no clue who Tom Cruise was. Speaking to the website, one of the junior artist said, “Tom kaun? I don’t know who he is or what he does. We were told to come here by 1pm today and wait for a foreign VIP to come out of the airport gate and scream and shout when he came. None of us know who Tom is. There was a buffet lunch also for us and we were paid Rs 150 for this job today. We do this for television shows and other such events where crowds are required.”

Considering that Tom in reality has a huge fan base in India, it probably wouldn’t have taken the organizers to arrange for some real fans. In fact, some would have gone there willingly and wouldn’t have asked to be paid!

Cruise was in India to promote the fourth installment of the `Mission Impossible` franchise, ‘Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’ which also has Anil Kapoor.

Being the star that he is, Tom is probably used to being followed by fans and paparazzi all the time, but he probably would have never imagined that some people would be paid to pretend to be his fans!