Suri, the 20-year-old daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, has legally changed her surname from Cruise to Noelle, marking a definitive break with the actor’s family legacy. The university student made the change official through voter registration records, a significant personal decision in her transition to adulthood.
According to the Pennsylvania state election records accessed by Page Six, Suri legally changed her surname from Cruise to Noelle. The young woman registered to vote in Allegheny County during her first year of college, in October 2024. The choice of Noelle, which is Katie Holmes’s middle name, represents both a formal assertion of her identity and a statement about Suri’s relationship with her parents.
Months before she registered to vote as Suri Noelle, she had already adopted that full name for her high school graduation in June 2024. That same weekend, Tom Cruise was photographed attending Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour at Wembley Stadium in London. Something highlighted in a very graphic way the distance in the current father-daughter relationship.
Holmes and Cruise, one of the most famous couples of the late 2000s, were married from November 2006 to 2012. Suri Noelle was born on April 18, 2006, exactly one year after her parents’ first date. Her early years were the subject of constant press attention, and the little one made her public debut just a few months after birth in a 22-page Vanity Fair feature, with family photos taken by Annie Leibovitz.
Suri Noelle, following in her parents’ footsteps
Suri currently studies at Carnegie Mellon University, where she is pursuing a major in musical theatre at its prestigious School of Dramatic Arts. Following in her famous parents’ footsteps, she has actively participated in student theatre groups and already has her first role in sight: she will star in Midsummer!, a contemporary adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, which will premiere at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe between July 31 and August 1.
When Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes separated in 2012, they stated they were “committed to collaborating as parents to watch over our daughter Suri.” At that time they added that their intention was to keep the family’s matters private. Since then, the actors have spoken publicly about their daughter only on rare occasions.
Katie Holmes and Suri Noelle, in a recent image.
“What has been really important to me with my daughter, given that she was so exposed at such a young age, is that I really like protecting her,” Katie Holmes told Glamour magazine in 2023. “I am very grateful to be a mother, to be her mother. She is an incredible person,” the star of Dawson’s Creek added a year later during a conversation with Town & Country.
Months after this interview was published, the actress found herself compelled to turn to social media to deny a report published by the British Daily Mail. They claimed Suri would have access to a substantial trust fund. Katie Holmes characterized the piece as “completely false” and stated that it was “dangerous to turn her daughter into a target.”
Brad Pitt, disowned by his children
The news that Suri Noelle has dropped the Cruise surname comes just days after two of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s children have also broken with their father. Zahara, 21, and Maddox, 24, are trying to remove Pitt from their legal names, according to court documents filed in California. Both cited personal reasons for requesting the change.
Shiloh Jolie, the daughter of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.
This is the latest chapter in the high-profile separation between Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. The former power couple has been caught up in a long legal dispute since their split a decade ago. They finally finalized the divorce agreement in late 2024, but they still disagree over Château Miraval, the French winery they once co-owned.
Jolie, who had previously used a hyphenated surname, dropped Pitt from her full name in 2019 after a court formally dissolved the marriage. Another one of her daughters, Vivienne, used the name Vivienne Jolie in The Outsiders, the Tony-winning musical she helped produce with her mother in 2024. That same year, her daughter Shiloh also filed to legally remove her father’s surname.
