TV shapes our
culture, it helps us to share experiences and codify them into stories and moral values. The ancient Greeks had
mythology and
sagas, such as the story of
Ulysses sailing the seas, or
Daphne turning into a
laurel tree for fear of being raped by
Apollo; with the advent of mass publishing in the 15th century we saw the development of
novels,
essays,
newspapers; today, we use TV as a medium to share stories, real or fictitious, and we do this out of a need to relate our own experiences to those of others.
Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, or rather, their public image as it appears in the papers and on TV, are like the ancient Greek gods and heroes: unreal and untouchable, but at the same time, only humans like you or me. They are icons; the stories of their lives are used as parables, vehicles that help us evaluate our own lives.
There may be more profound ways of doing this: real life contact with family, friends, or your local community; religion; good old literature; but I do think it accounts for our fascination with stars and their personal lives.