In 2003 I went to Serbia to collect financing from the charming and enlightened Minister of Culture on behalf of the freedom-loving and democratically elected Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic for the filming of Sparked, the life story of the genius Nikola Tesla. But Djindjic was assassinated and the funds withdrawn by the interim regime.

I barely made it past the shutdown at customs on my way out, given a pass only because a security guard had seen me on Serbian TV and knew I was a fan of Tesla, the inventor of the alternating current motor.

Although I’m sure my interference in Serbia’s history was just a coincidental case of bad timing, things can get ugly when national heroes are at stake. (For my pains in wanting to restore Tesla to the dignity in history he deserves, I received hate mail from the relatives of Thomas Edison – he whom many believe invented the electric chair, remember.)

And now Tom Cruise has innocently and inadvertently gone where angels fear to tread, into the heart of a controversy in which the German Government is trying to cripple if not quash his next film, Valkyrie, due to begin shooting on July 19.

In the film he is to portray Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, the German Army officer who was one of the leaders of the failed but heroic assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944.

The Berlin-based studio Babelsberg – the German co-producer of the film with Cruise’s company, the revived United Artists – is handling the locations in Germany and insists that, in spite of delays for permits from German officials, it believed it had finally obtained all the necessary permits. One of them granted access to the famed Bendlerblock, located next to the Defence Ministry in Berlin. It was here that Stauffenberg and other July 20 conspirators were executed, and now houses a memorial dedicated to Germans who resisted the Nazi regime.

Now the film-makers have been told that they will not be allowed to use the Bendlerblock. Stefan Olbermann, a spokesman for the Finance Ministry, said on Monday that “it would not be appropriate to film there”, pointing to previous bad blood when film crews were allowed access. He added that the denial of permission “was not related to the fact that Tom Cruise is a Scientologist”.

Me thinks he doth protest too much. It’s well-known that Berlin regards Scientology as a totalitarian and exploitative cult masquerading as a religion, an intolerant “in-club” of racial purists. Recently, Franz Josef Jung, the German Defence Minister, made a statement, now reversed, that the film-makers could not shoot at any military sites as long as Cruise plays Stauffenberg, because of his adherence to Scientology. And Stauffenberg’s eldest son Berthold has announced that he does not want Cruise to portray his father under any terms.

It’s been 63 years since Stauffenberg’s coup attempt, and today he is to Germans what “Jefferson, Lincoln, motherhood and apple pie are to the Americans”, according to the German journalist Josef Joffe. “A professing Scientologist in the role of Stauffenberg is like casting Judas as Jesus. It’s secular blasphemy.”

Cruise is known for being attracted to heroic parts. He feels drawn to – and is damn good at playing – the Good Guy, the Great White Hope, the Right Stuff, the Last Samurai, the Deus ex Machina who saves the day and instructs us along the way in some subtly crafted and easily digested lessons of moral rectitude, discipline, focus and charm. He is a man devoted to his craft and is certainly kinder to his fans than other superstars, making mobile calls as favours to autograph seekers. His patience with his admirers is legendary.

So is it fair that he is being hounded for his affiliation with Scientology? I think not. There is a limited number of ways in which a megastar can deal with Hollywood’s peculiar pressures, its competitiveness and isolation, its attacks by gutter press, its temptations towards the dark side of drugs, hookers and allnight parties. Now that EST, encounter groups, Christianity and analysis are passé in the City of Lost Angels, what remains to address the stars’ dark nights of the soul is (1) yoga, (2) Alcoholics Anonymous, (3) plastic surgery, (4) groups on the “Ascension” path, (5) conspiracy theorists and (6) Scientology.

Sure, there's a suspicion among the rest of us that promotion through Scientology’s ranks is associated with allowing a vacuum cleaner to be attached to one’s bank account. The naivety of actors – whose particular craft is related to the childlike drive to please, play and perform – makes them rife for exploitation, if exploitation is in the offing.

But it seems stretching it to make Cruise take the flak for his philosophy of choice while he seeks, with all sincerity and a huge amount of resources, to promote Germany’s favourite son. Give the guy a break. Everybody knows Hollywood types are eccentric and daredevil weirdos, don’t they? Where’s the news in that?

Even so, I am turning down the offer that just came in the post, to direct for the Masters of Horror TV series a movie about George Washington cannibalising babies. I mean, I have my dignity, tattered as it may appear to some.

And I want to stay alive.

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