This story sounds almost too good to be true, but you never know. Yesterday, we covered Tom Cruise preening in front of Taj Mahal during his weekend visit to promote Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. In the process, Tom declared that he’d willingly go Bollywood, and many of you thought he was merely hoping for an opportunity to once again play a dashing young leading man. Indeed, Tom’s got the try-too-hard oozing from his pores and is often desperate to impress even while rocking out on a balcony to universal cringes. So what would Tom think if he knew that the hundreds of screaming “fans” that had greeted him at the Mumbai airport didn’t actually know who he was? According to Firstpost’s Bollywood division, these people were in fact hired greeters who were paid to cheer and shout for Tom as he enthusiastically waved back at them. Really:

When the world’s biggest star and possibly the most famous Scientologist on earth, Tom Cruise, stepped out of the Mumbai domestic airport on Saturday with his entourage, little did he know that the screaming crowds he was waving out to were not his Indian fans at all!

In fact, the 200-and-odd people gathered there didn’t even know who he was and they couldn’t care less. They had been hired at the rate of Rs 150, or $3 per person approximately, by a model coordinator to do the same!

“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,” said one of the junior artistes at the airport, who was hired as an excited Tom fan.

Given that the absolutely handsome Cruise of the disarming smile has a huge fan base in the country, thanks to some really great and popular cinema (Jerry Maguire, Top Gun, Cocktail, Risky Business, The Last Samurai, Rain Man, A Few Good Men and the Mission Impossible series) it would not have taken much to get more than half of the city’s population to converge at the airport or any venue to catch a glimpse of the star they love and adore.

Cruise is in the city to promote the fourth installment of the Mission Impossible franchise, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, which also sees Anil Kapoor playing an Indian character, Brij Nath, in the film.

For someone who is chased down by the paparazzi all over the world in fast cars and helicopters and whose every movement is tracked down by tabloids and magazines, including his wife Katie Holmes’, and daughter Suri’s too, it’s going to come as a shock to him that he was greeted by a motley group of paid people posing to be his fans in Mumbai. Of course he doesn’t know it yet, but when he does, it is not something Cruise is likely to forget in a very long time!

[From Firstpost]

We don’t have access to photos of Tom’s arrival in Mumbai, but you can see the claimed fans-for-hire in action here. Poor Tom. I know the guy is so full of delusions in so many ways (ahem, Scientology), but this news might just crush him if anyone dared to inform him of the matter. He supposed to be a worldwide superstar who’d never need paid reinforcements even on an international level. In order to cope, he’d have to crank his lifts to the very highest setting. Oh, who am I kidding? He’d never believe a story like this. “It’s lies! All lies from the apostates!”

Update: Tom’s rep has responded to this report: “The idea that fans were paid to cheer is completely ludicrous and entirely false.” Not that a denial means anything at all, and ten bucks says that Tom himself still hasn’t heard about the story.

Photos courtesy of WENN