Tom Cruise might be set to portray a heroic German wartime resistance leader in an upcoming film, but some in Germany clearly prefer the Hollywood star and prominent Scientologist in the role of the villain. Last summer, while Cruise was filming Valkyrie in Berlin, he was deemed unfit to play Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg, an admired German army officer involved in a failed plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler during the second world war.
Now, months before the film's release, the movie star has been likened to Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels by a prominent German expert on the Third Reich.
Both episodes are part of a very heated public debate about Cruise's role in spreading Scientology in Germany and the country's tough line against the controversial religion, founded by US science-fiction writer Ron Hubbard in 1953.
'It's important that the public can look behind the scenes of these kinds [of] organisations. There are always two faces,' says Ursula Caberta, the director of a local government agency in Hamburg set up to counter Scientology and similar groups considered dangerous.
'One is the smiling actor and the other is that of the Scientologist.'
The latest controversy was sparked by Cruise's appearance at a Scientology ceremony a few years ago that was only made public recently via the internet.