Tue, December 16, 2008
Tom Cruise was the picture of health today as he appeared on a US chat show.
Cruise, who was recently pictured looking a few pounds heavier, seems to have shed his excess weight as he looked years younger on the Today Show in New York, Mail Online reported.
The Mission Impossible actor, 46, was on the show to promote his latest film, Valkyrie, in which he plays real-life Nazi officer Colonel Stauffenberg, the mastermind behind the last known assassination plot to kill Adolf Hitler during World War II.
Cruise and presenter Matt Lauer later arm wrestled ahead of his scheduled interview.
The pair were seen pretending to fight - a joking reference to the last time they met on the Today show in 2005, when Cruise famously dubbed Lauer 'glib' in a fractious interview, after they disagreed over the use of anti-depressant drugs.
After looking at it, it's not what I had intended," he told Lauer. "That's one of those things that you go, 'I could have handled that better.' I didn't communicate it the way that I wanted to communicate it. That's not who I am.
'I learned a good lesson.'
Cruise said he isn't done publicly talking about Scientology or expressing his views on controversial social issues.
'I just think there's a time and a place for it. Things can get misunderstood and twisted," he said. "When people are tuning in to hear about my movie, that's what I'm here to talk about it.'
They also briefly chatted about wife Katie Holmes. The couple have a two-year-old daughter, Suri.
When Lauer told Cruise that he doesn't see him jumping on couches anymore, the actor chuckled.
'I can't help that,' he said. 'She's an amazing woman.'
Cruise will be spending Christmas in New York after he was persuaded to leave their sprawling home in Beverly Hills.
Katie has been appearing on Broadway in All My Sons and a source says: ‘She has been doing loads of travelling back and forth with Suri from New York to LA between shows and she’s tired.
‘She asked Tom over to New York for Christmas and he agreed. Both their families are also coming over.
‘Katie would prefer to live in New York. She and Tom have been leading increasingly separate lives.’
Despite the distance between them Katie and Tom have made a huge effort to keep their marriage alive, with Tom frequently flying to New York to see his family.
