Cruise and Cruz broke up nearly two months ago

Movie stars Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz have split up, the spokeswoman for the former revealed to the press on March 26. Their highly publicized relationship lasted less than three years. (Apparently, not even the fact that their surnames were homonyms was enough to make them a compatible couple.)

“They broke up at the end of January, and it’s amicable,” Lee Anne DeVette, Cruise’s sister and new publicist, told People magazine. She and Cruz’ publicist, Robert Garlock, say that it partly resulted from the actors’ busy work schedules, which kept them apart most of the time. They had been living together at Cruise’s home in Los Angeles.

“They remain good friends and still talk often,” Garlock told People. “There is no other person involved.”

One might speculate that Cruise’s deep involvement in the Church of Scientology played a part in the split, but Garlock said that this was not the case. He did tell the magazine that Cruz took Scientology courses and “found them beneficial” but never converted to the religion.

However, Cruise’s new publicist DeVette is also a Scientologist. His former publicist Pat Kingsley, who also claims that the split was friendly, was allegedly uncomfortable with the actor’s public discussion of his religious beliefs, according to a source quoted in the New York Daily News. Cruise recently replaced her with DeVette after 14 years with Kingsley, although DeVette has denied rumors that the publicist-change was religion-related.

One source close to Cruise and Cruz told People, “The relationship just ran its course, and they decided not to be girlfriend and boyfriend anymore. Through most of the relationship, they were both shooting movies in separate parts of the world.”

Cruise began seeing Cruz shortly after his ten-year, high-profile marriage to Nicole Kidman ended in 2001. He’d met Cruz the previous year, when they co-starred in Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky, a remake of a 1997 Spanish film that had also starred Cruz, Alejandro Amenabar’s Abre los Ojos. Since then, the media have heavily scrutinized the couple; Cruise sued an Australian tabloid in 2003 for making defamatory allegations about Cruz’ character and their relationship.

Cruise, a superstar since the ’80s who has received Oscar nominations for Born on the Fourth of July, Jerry Maguire, and Magnolia, has several new projects lined up. He will appear in the third Mission: Impossible movie and is slated for roles in the thriller Collateral (opposite comedian Jamie Foxx) and Steven Spielberg’s upcoming war drama Ghost Soldiers.

North American audiences became aware of Cruz from her role in Pedro Almodovar’s 1999 hit All about My Mother, an Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Language Film. Her next films will be Sahara with Matthew McConaughey, which is currently in production in Morocco, and Head in the Clouds, opposite this year’s Best Actress Academy Award winner, Charlize Theron.