Cruise Rehashes PR Misfires, Gushes About Katie

Tom Cruise promotes his upcoming musical Rock of Ages in the latest issue of Playboy, but not surprisingly, the movie talk isn’t getting quite as much attention as the quotes about Cruise’s personal life. Some highlights:

• On plastic surgery: "I haven't [gotten any], and I never would."
• On his PR nightmare: Asked what he learned from his controversial interview with Matt Lauer (in which he disparaged psychiatry and prescription drugs for post-partum depression) and his Oprah couch fiasco, Cruise replied, “When I go back and look at it, I find myself thinking, I don’t feel that way. I get how it came across, but I don’t feel that way, and I never have. Telling people how to live their lives? I saw how that came across and how pieces were edited.”

• On Katie Holmes: “She is an extraordinary person, and if you spent five minutes with her, you’d see it. … She’s funny and charming, and when she walks into the room, I just feel better. I’m a romantic. I like doing things like creating romantic dinners, and she enjoys that. I don’t know what to say—I’m just happy, and I have been since the moment I met her. What we have is very special.”
• On Scientology: “I have respect for what other people believe. What I believe in my own life is that it’s a search for how I can do things better, whether it’s being a better man or a better father or finding ways for myself to improve.” He adds, “If I don’t talk about my religion, if I say I’m not discussing it or different humanitarian things I’m working on, they’re like, ‘He’s avoiding it.’ If I do talk about it, it becomes, ‘Oh, he’s proselytizing.’”

Click for the full interview. (More Tom Cruise stories.)