14 DAY TRIAL // Next Friday, Katie Holmes is coming back to the big screen with the star-studded “The Giver” and her promo appearance for it was on The Today Show with Matt Lauer. This was also the first time she had to answer a Tom Cruise divorce question, though by no means the last.
The interview is available in the video below.
After “Batman Begins,” Katie’s career stalled, presumably because her ex-husband Tom Cruise wanted her to be Mrs. Perfect Wife and Mother and not Mrs. Movie Star. Sure, she still did movies here and there, but they were not high-profile jobs and they were few and far between.
“The Giver” is, in a way, her comeback so, naturally, people will be curious about what she’s been doing all these years, Matt tells her. More importantly, he wants to know, would she ever trade some of the fame she achieved for being Tom’s wife for the chance to get back her career pre-Tom? In other words, would she ever want to change the fact that she was married to him.
That sounds like a very personal and potentially offensive question to ask of her, but she plays it very gracefully.
“You know what?” she tells Lauer. “I never really look back. I just approach life [taking] it one day at a time. I'm really excited about where I am right now. I've had some really wonderful creative experiences. I'm just really grateful.”
That’s the most delicate way of telling a reporter to stop asking intrusive questions if we ever saw one.
In the same interview, Katie also talks a bit about her daughter with Cruise, Suri, who is now 8 years old. She says her goal is to give her some of the “gift of normalcy” she had while growing up in Ohio.
“Of course you try your best. I try very hard because I'm very grateful for my upbringing, my parents, my siblings. I try to do what they did for me for my little one. The most important thing for me is letting her know how proud I am and her accomplishments mean everything. Whatever I do is whatever. It's really just about her. That's what I think is most important,” Holmes explains.
Since she plays Mother in “The Giver,” she probably drew on her own experience with Suri for inspiration. The film is based on the best-selling novel by Lois Lowry and also stars Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Alexander Skarsgard, and Brenton Thwaites.
Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise were married for 5 years when she filed for divorce in June 2012, reportedly blindsiding him with the announcement. Rumor has it that she had planned her “escape” with months in advance, seeing attorneys in secret and even using disposable phones so that Tom might never find out about what she had in mind.
This kind of secrecy was necessary because of Cruise’s involvement with the Church of Scientology and because Katie feared he might take Suri away from her and she would never see her again. Allegedly, of course.
However, theirs was the quickest and “cleanest” divorce ever in showbiz, with both parties agreeing to settle within weeks after the filing. Besides whatever she got in the divorce, Katie also walked away with full custody of Suri and a paper barring her from ever speaking about her time with Scientology’s most famous member.