After Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt’s daughters dropped their fathers’ names at the first opportunity, why are so many A-listers in the ‘Bad Dads Club’

Being born to an A-list parent must be a bit like winning the genetic lottery – with children of Hollywood titans enjoying cushty upbringings in a life of luxury.

But of course, money is not everything – and some children of famous men know this all too well.

In recent months, the now-adult children of some of the most famous men in the world have disowned their fathers, dropping their names and appearing to cut all ties with them as soon as they come of age.

Both Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise’s children appear to have disowned their fathers as they embark upon adult life with their mothers alone – and, while these are extreme examples of parental estrangement, it can be argued that plenty of famous men hold membership cards to the ‘bad dad club’.

Whether it’s estrangement, bitter custody battles or outright denials of paternity, several famous men have fallen out of favour with their own children over the years.

Here, FEMAIL takes a look at how some of the most powerful actors, sportsmen and businessmen in the world who may have excelled in their professional fields, but didn’t quite cut it with parenthood… 

1. Tom Cruise

When Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes welcomed their daughter Suri into the world in April 2006, it was just another chapter in the perfect Hollywood love story that was their romance.

The prominent Scientologist, now 61, had just years earlier jumped up and down on Oprah Winfrey’s sofa and declared his love for Holmes, 12 years his junior.

After Suri’s birth, the Top Gun actor gushed that his baby daughter was ‘beautiful’ and that her birth was ‘powerful and spiritual’ to witness.

‘It was everything that we wanted it to be,’ he told ABC News at the time.

A few years later, when Suri was four years old, Cruise spoke to German newspaper Bild about his relationship with his youngest child.

‘I love all my children, but Suri is my fountain of youth,’ he said, adding: ‘We jump on the trampoline together.’

However while Cruise has maintained a close relationship with his older children Connor and Isabella (who in turn are no longer close with their mother Nicole Kidman), the actor has become distanced from his youngest daughter since his split from Katie Holmes in 2012, when Suri was just six years old.

With the divorce came the end of the Hollywood love story and claims that Cruise’s devotion to the controversial Church of Scientology was the main reason behind the split.

Divorce documents at the time revealed that Katie Holmes would receive $400,000 every year from multi-millionaire Tom in the way of child support until Suri turns 18.

The Hollywood actor would also pay for Suri’s medical and dental expenses as well as her insurance, education costs and college tuition. The money is reportedly paid by electronic transfer.

Regarding Suri’s education, the couple agreed their daughter would not attend boarding school – which quashed rumours she would attend a Scientology-led institution.

Katie was granted sole custody of their daughter while Tom was allowed ‘meaningful’ visitation rights.

However, Tom has not been seen out in public with his daughter for around a decade, and sources have claimed he now has little involvement in her life.

The last photo of the Top Gun actor out and about with his daughter was a trip to Disneyland in 2012, the year his divorce from Katie was finalised.

In the immediate years after Cruise and Holmes’s divorce, the Hollywood titan was spotted out and about with his daughter at various funfairs and other family-orientated events. However, as Suri has reached adolescence, sources close to the teenager and her mother have claimed Cruise now has ‘no part’ in his daughter’s life.

While Cruise has previously fought back over claims he was an ‘absent’ father – even suing Bauer Media over such reports in 2016 – he appears not to have been present for some key events in his daughter’s life. 

When Suri, who is based in New York where she lives with Katie, turned 18 earlier this year, Cruise was 3,500 miles away filming in London.

As she graduated from high school and attended her prom last week, again her father was in London, where he was spotted attending Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour at Wembley Stadium.

 2. Brad Pitt

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s 12-year relationship saw them have six children; both biological and adopted, as they became one of the most powerful families in Hollywood.

However when the couple split in 2012 just two years after they had tied the knot, court papers filed by Jolie made claims of abuse towards Pitt, citing an incident on a plane in which he allegedly grabbed her by the head, attacked two of the children and poured alcohol over his family members. He has always denied the claims.

An FBI report into the incident, published in 2022, eventually cleared Pitt of wrongdoing. 

Son Pax previously said in an Instagram post that all four of the youngest children — including Shiloh — ‘tremble with fear’ in their father’s presence.

Since the split, the children — Maddox, 22, Pax, 20, Zahara, 19, Shiloh, 18, and Knox and Vivienne, 15 — have formed a tight gang of seven with their mother. Last year she called them ‘the closest people to me in my life’, adding: ‘We had to heal. There are things we needed to heal from.’

Elsewhere in court documents, Jolie alleged Pitt was abusive towards her in incidents that occurred before the plane incident.

‘Pitt’s history of physical abuse of Jolie started well before the family’s plane trip from France to Los Angeles… this flight marked the first time he turned his physical abuse on the children as well,’ her attorneys claimed in newly released court papers.

The court papers claim that Ms Jolie has evidence of ‘Pitt’s history of physical abuse of the family and control abuse of Jolie’ and claims the children continue to experience ‘significant and ongoing post-traumatic stress’. 

In recent years, Shiloh has walked red carpets at her mother’s side; while none of the children have done the same for their father. 

And as Shiloh turned 18 last month, she began the legal process to formally drop her father’s surname, suggesting a fractious relationship between the pair. 

A source told the Daily Mail: ‘The name change goes back to the custody battle, and Shiloh’s belief that her rights as a victim were violated.

‘Shiloh believed she had the right, as a victim of crime, to testify — and was prevented from doing so.’

During the divorce hearing, which took place between 2020 and 2021, Jolie petitioned to have her children testify as custody arrangements were settled; but the request was denied. 

Zahara, a student at Spelman College, Atlanta, no longer uses the name Pitt.

Vivienne has been working this spring with Angelina on a musical, The Outsiders, in New York and is credited as simply ‘Vivienne Jolie’ in the programme.

Maddox and Pax have not used the Pitt name for years.

3. Jon Voight

As Angelina Jolie forms a tight unit with her children as they distance themselves from their father, she, as their mother, knows a thing or two about estranged fathers herself.

The actress and her Oscar-winning father, Jon Voight, have had their fair share of ups and downs – with their notoriously fraught relationship leading to them having zero contact for several years.

Although the father-daughter duo have had moments of reconciliation throughout their strained relationship, they have also experienced many turbulent moments that have led to them becoming estranged.

Voight’s infidelity whilst married to Jolie’s mother Marcheline Bertrand and their subsequent divorce was also reportedly a driving force behind the father and daughter’s falling out, with bitter feelings resurfacing over the years.

Jolie and her older brother, James Haven, were raised primarily by their mother with Voight making sporadic appearances in his children’s lives – taking them to film premieres and public events.

Jolie penned a piece for The New York Times in 2020 for Mother’s Day, in honor of her late mother who passed away in January 2007, aged 56, after a long battle with ovarian cancer.

In the piece, Jolie touched on her parents’ divorce, admitting it was one of the reasons why she and her father had such a difficult relationship.

‘When my father had an affair, it changed [my mom’s] life,’ she wrote in the piece. ‘It set her dream of family life ablaze. But she still loved being a mother.’

When Jolie divorced her husband, Billy Bob Thornton, in 2003 after three years of marriage, her father publicly commented on her separation.

Voight admitted he blamed his own divorce from Jolie’s mother for his daughter’s ‘serious mental problems.’

Speaking with Entertainment Weekly in 2002, Voight claimed his daughter was ‘never normal’ and said it was due to how he behaved in his marriage.

Voight then claimed Jolie had ­refused to speak to him and even went on to legally remove ‘Voight’ as her surname in favor of her middle name Jolie – which she had long used as her stage name – a little over a month after the Entertainment Weekly interview.

Jolie responded to Voight’s comments in a statement, saying: ‘I don’t want to make public the reasons for my bad relationship with my father.

‘I will only say that, like every child, [brother] Jamie and I would have loved to have had a warm and loving relationship with our dad,’ the statement continued.

‘After all these years, I have determined that it is not healthy for me to be around my father, especially now that I am responsible for my own child.’

Since then, they have continued to share a strained relationship; with Voight publicly criticised his daughter in recent months over posts she had shared criticising Israel’s military action in Gaza, following Hamas’s October 7 attack.

Taking to Instagram, Voight said: ‘I am very disappointed that my daughter, like so many, has no understanding of God’s honor, God’s truths.’

However, the Oscar winner has also been full of praise for his daughter, and said he was ‘proud’ of Jolie and his granddaughter, Vivienne, after their musical The Outsiders scooped a Tony Award just a few weeks ago.

‘I’m very proud of Vivienne,’ Voight, 85, told TMX. ‘I’m really proud of Angie because she really tries to encourage each of the kids to be what they want to be.’

4. Keith Allen

Singer and actress Lily Allen, a mother-of-two herself, has never shied away from addressing her difficult relationship with her father Keith, who is also an actor.

The pair have had many ups and downs over the years; particularly since Lily reached adulthood and embarked upon her own career in showbusiness.

Soon after Lily’s birth, Keith began an affair with a brigadier’s wife who lived near the set of a film he was working on in Dorset. By 1989, the marriage to Lily’s mother Alison had run its course. 

Lily has previously spoken about how she attempted to remain close to her father during her teenage years; attending Fulham matches with Keith in order to bond with him. 

However the pair have never managed to mask their differences in public, and Lily has publicly accused her father of being an absent figure in the past.

In 2015 she tweeted: ‘My dad walked out on me when I was 4, I’m sick of this. My dad was at Latitude when I headlined and didn’t even come to see me. I’ve probably spent more time walking my dogs than I have with my dad my entire life.’ 

In 2021, Lily was cast in West End play 2:22 A Ghost Story. Shortly after she was announced in the cast, she spoke to the Telegraph about her relationship with her father and revealed she hadn’t spoken to him ‘for a while’.

She has also previously revealed about her childhood: ‘One of my earliest memories is of when Mum and Dad split up. We were in our council flat in Bloomsbury and Dad was saying: ‘Me and Mum are splitting up now.’

‘I was about four and I was thinking: ‘Does that mean we’ve got to look for a new dad?’ It was very hard for Mum. She was producing her first film and my younger brother, Alfie, was a difficult kid.

‘I just lived within my own brain. I had this blanket and I’d suck my thumb and watch the world go by.’

In 2018, Lily also revealed she had caused a rift with her father after claiming he had had a cocaine-induced heart attack while attending Glastonbury Festival when she was 13 years old. In fact, he had suffered from acute food poisoning.

The Smile singer claimed Keith sent her ‘quite a cross text’ after she’d made the public claim.

She recalled: ‘I said, ‘Sorry that’s what I thought… I’m really sorry if I got that wrong but that’s how I remembered it and you never explained it to me in any other way so that’s what I wrote’ and he said, ‘Well that’s not true.”

5. Alec Baldwin

These days, Hollywood actor Alec Baldwin, 66, is settled into family life with his wife Hilaria, 40, and their seven children; Carmen, 10, Rafel, eight, Leonardo, seven, Romeo, five, Eduardo, three, Maria, three, and Ilaria, one.

But the 30 Rock actor has a now-adult daughter from his first marriage to fellow Hollywood star Kim Basinger; 28-year-old Ireland Baldwin.

Ireland was born to the A-list couple in 1995, but after they split in 2002, they became embroiled in a bitter court battle over custody of her.

However, Baldwin was eventually banned from seeing Ireland by a family court after he made a furious phone call to the then-11-year-old in which he threw a series of insults her way, branding her a ‘thoughtless pig’.

The call was made after Ireland, who was living in LA with her mother while Baldwin was living on the other side of the country in New York City, missed an earlier scheduled phone call from her father.

A transcript of the call, which was recorded in court papers, revealed Baldwin said:  ‘You are a rude, thoughtless little pig. You don’t have the brains or the decency as a human being.

‘I don’t give a damn that you’re 12 years old, or 11 years old, or that you’re a child, or that your mother is a thoughtless pain in the ass who doesn’t care about what you do as far as I’m concerned.

‘Once again I have made an ass of myself trying to get to a phone. You have humiliated me for the last time with this phone.’

He then threatened to fly to LA ‘for the day, just to straighten you out on this issue’.

After the transcript was leaked to the public, Baldwin apologised for his words and insisted he had a ‘normal relationship’ with his daughter. He blamed ‘parental alienation’ for his tirade.

Despite the shocking call, it seems Alec and Ireland have mended their relationship, with Ireland even being able to joke about the insults on more than one occasion.

In 2019, she joined a comedy roast event at which her father was the subject and landed a killer joke about the incident.

She said: ‘It’s good to be here. I almost didn’t even know about it because I haven’t checked my voicemails from my dad from the last 12 years or something?’

6. Elon Musk 

As a billionaire with the means to financially support thousands of children, Elon Musk has certainly committed to his pledge to help grow the world’s population; as the father of 12 children.

The Tesla founder has made no secret of his belief that the greatest threat to humanity is the collapse of birth rates, once tweeting, ‘population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming’.

However, it seems one of his 12 children does not have much of an interest in carrying on the family name after she, like Suri and Shiloh, dropped her father’s surname.

Xavier Alexander Musk was born to Elon and his former wife, Canadian author Justine Wilson, to whom he was married from 2000 to 2008.

However in 2022, she officially changed her name to Vivian Jenna Wilson as she both announced she identifies as a woman, and that she wanted to take her mother’s surname.

The petition, which was filed in a Los Angeles court, claimed that Vivian no longer wanted to ‘be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form’ – however, she did not elaborate further on her reasoning for wanting to cut ties.

Later that year, the billionaire opened up about the rift with his daughter and suggested she had been brainwashed my ‘Marxists’ while at university.

Speaking to the Financial Times, he said: ‘It’s full-on communism . . . and a general sentiment that if you’re rich, you’re evil.’

Musk continued: ‘It may change, but I have very good relationships with all [of his other children]. Can’t win them all.’

7. Dwight Yorke

Even before Harvey Price was born, Dwight Yorke appeared to want little to do with his son.

The footballer, who hails from Trinidad and Tobago, dated Harvey’s mother Katie Price briefly before she fell pregnant in 2001 – but after learning she was expecting, Yorke denied he was the father of the glamour model’s baby.

However a paternity test taken after Harvey was born proved Dwight was his biological father.

Despite this, Dwight has had very little contact with his son over the years, with Katie recently revealing the former footballer has only met Harvey, who is autistic and blind, nine times in his life.

Speaking on a podcast last September, mother-of-five Katie recalled Harvey’s birth, claiming Yorke didn’t step up at the time.

She said: ‘Dwight turned up at the last minute but he didn’t want to come in the room or cut the cord so dad did it, he cut the cord.’ 

The glamour model also revealed to the Guardian that, despite Yorke’s apparent disinterest in his son, the door remains open to him.

She told the Guardian: ‘The door is always open. I would love the day I see Dwight and Harvey in front of each other.

‘My mum still contacts his manager every year, and asks does he want to see Harvey for his birthday, and it’s always the same – ‘no’.’

Following her split from Dwight, Katie struck up a romance with singer Peter Andre after meeting on I’m A Celebrity in 2004, who helped raise Harvey.

The couple also had two children; son Junior, 18, and Princess, 15, before they split in 2009.

8. Eddie Murphy

Comedy actor Eddie Murphy is one of the most recognisable faces in Hollywood with a huge number of acting credits under his belt.

However, another large number to Murphy’s name is the children he has fathered; with the list reaching double digits at 10.

While Murphy shares good relationships with many of his children, he was embroiled in a high-profile paternity battle over one of his children, whom he shares with Spice Girl Melanie Brown.

The couple appeared to be head-over-heels in love with each other until their shock split in 2006 when Mel B was pregnant, at which point Murphy told reporters he was unsure if the baby was his.

Mel gave birth to Angel Iris Murphy Brown on Eddie’s 46th birthday, April 3, 2007 and on June 22, 2007, the star’s reps announced that a DNA test had confirmed that Eddie was the father.

Initially Eddie – who now has ten children with five different women – repeatedly refused to have anything to do with Mel or their child, with reports claiming he insisted that she had tricked him into getting pregnant.

But the actor eventually had a change of heart.

In 2010, Mel B starred in a reality show in which she revisited the paternity battle.

She said on the show: ‘When the results of the DNA test came in and Angel was in fact, no surprise, Eddie Murphy’s child, I encouraged their relationship from day one.

‘And I didn’t really hear anything for a few years. So this year it’s been really, really nice that they’ve both been able to get in contact with each other and get to know each other.

‘Unbeknownst to press and the media, the Eddie and Angel have started seeing each other but it’s always been behind closed doors.’

In her memoir, Mel added that thanks to Eddie’s mother, Lillian Lynch, Angel was reunited with her dad in May, 2017 and the two now have a close relationship.