Interview: Tom Cruise

Cruise got scary when he dumped his publicist, took up with Katie Holmes and started bouncing on Oprah Winfrey's sofa. Comics mocked him and, at the premiere of War Of The Worlds in London, a fake journalist squirted him with water. Later his good-guy image took another battering for blasting Brooke Shields for taking prescription drugs to battle postpartum depression, and lecturing on the virtues of Scientology.

His audience turned querulous. Why wouldn't TomKat elaborate on how they met? Was it convenient timing that both had blockbusters opening? Why was Katie's vocabulary suddenly reduced to the words Tom and amazing? And could this controversial star ever regain his box office supremacy?

Cruise has always said that he relishes a challenge. "TAPS was the first film I did, back in 1981," he recalls, sitting in New York's Regency Hotel the week before Christmas. "And since then I've tried to find different kinds of characters with the material that was available. Rain Man and Born On The Fourth Of July were pictures that you might look back at and say, 'Of course.' But when we were doing Rain Man, we'd joke that it was just about two jerks in a car driving around.

"And Born On The Fourth Of July – when I took that movie, people said, 'What are you doing? You're going to ruin your career.' I've always tried to find something that interested me. I haven't only tried. I did it. Everything that I've done interested me. I learned a lot and challenged myself."

Now, in Valkyrie, he takes on the real-life heroism of Claus von Stauffenberg, the eye-patch-wearing Second World War German officer who led a 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. Playing a German military assassin might not seem like the most obvious choice for a guy looking to get back in filmgoers' good graces – but maybe that's because Cruise flatly resists any suggestion that he is making some kind of comeback.

"I don't really see it that way," he says. "You know, my daughter was born, and I've been making films. I love being a father. I remember being four and five years old; I always wanted to work, grow up, be a father. I've enjoyed every part of that. I feel lucky to have the teenagers (Connor and Isabella, whom he adopted during his marriage to Nicole Kidman] and to have the toddler (his daughter Suri with Katie Holmes] also; to have the journey of both happening at the same time – all my kids are phenomenal."

Thomas Cruise Mapother was born in Syracuse, New York, in 1962, the son of an amateur actress and an electrical engineer. His parents divorced when he was 12, with unusual acrimony, and Cruise was brought up by his mother. Cruise has in the past revealed how determined he was not to let his divorce from Kidman affect his relationship with their adopted children. The couple split up in 2000, 10 years after he formally ended his first marriage to actress Mimi Rogers. "Nic and I are very committed and successful in sharing the parenting," he has insisted.

Valkyrie is a project that pre-dates all the recent Cruise domestic joys and professional crises. Director Bryan Singer first met Cruise at the premiere of Mission: Impossible in 1996 when the star charged up to congratulate him on a film Cruise had already seen a couple of times – The Usual Suspects. It took them 12 years to finally make Valkyrie together, a historical thriller that tries to generate tension with a historical plot to kill the Fhrer. If you know anything about history, you know what happens to Hitler, but that didn't bother Cruise.

"You look at Apollo 13, Titanic, any film that's made out of a book, people know how it's gonna end," he says. "I had an idea when I read the Valkyrie script, of course, but I was surprised in reading it that I was that caught up and I was whipping through the pages. After reading the script, I put it down and thought, 'This can't be true.' There's actual dialogue in the film that I discovered was from letters and journals that Chris McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander, the screenwriters, had studied.

"Bryan was always specific; 'This is a suspense thriller about killing Hitler.' And I grew up playing with the neighbourhood kids in the yard wanting to kill Nazis, wanting to kill Hitler. You think, 'Why didn't someone just shoot him?'"

It's fascinating to watch Cruise tackle a role like von Stauffenberg. During service in the 10th Panzer Army in North Africa he lost his left eye, most of his right hand, and two fingers of his left, and was peppered with shrapnel in the back and legs. A contemporary called him "rude" and "boorish" and "a swashbuckler" who set himself up as assassin as well as strategist "to overcompensate for the inferiority feelings engendered by his mutilation".

"He wanted a moral country, one that was part (of] and participated in the world; not annihilating, not the Holocaust, not world domination," counters Cruise, who immersed himself in historical research for the role. "He was a man able to really think for himself within all of that propaganda, and recognised very early on that insanity. 'Someone's gotta shoot that bastard,' is a quote of his as early as 1938.

"It wasn't just enough to kill Hitler – you had to have people in a position where they're gonna follow you because the army was compelled to give an oath to Hitler himself personally. As an American, that struck me. It's so creepy to get people to not be able to think for themselves."

The actor's steadfast dedication to Scientology continues to pull focus from his work. Director Singer gained permission to film at many of the authentic locations such as Columbia Haus, the former Nazi jail for political prisoners, and Bendlerblock, the site of Stauffenberg's execution. But initially the German Defence Ministry announced that it did not want him to shoot scenes at the country's Bendlerblock war memorial. According to ministry spokesman Harald Kammerbauer, it was because of Cruise's close affiliation with what Kammerbauer called the "Scientology cult". Germany does not recognise Scientology as a religion.

"I've been through stuff like this on movies, and it's part of the process," says Cruise. "You always go, 'Oh, boy, that could've been handled better.' But the important thing is we did get to shoot in the Bendlerblock and make the movie we wanted to make."

Some people may get an odd kick from seeing Cruise no longer in control, on screen and off, but only a fool would bet that he would give up. A canny businessman, Cruise usually takes profit points rather than a salary upfront. This may have contributed to the dipping of his star with cash-strapped studios, who resent giving 20% of their profits away when a film is a marginal success like Mission: Impossible III. The star's dominant, iconic image through 20 years, three Oscar nominations and three marriages has always been that of a steely-eyed striver. No other star in memory has stayed at the top for as long or displayed a keener nose for blockbuster material. It's a testament to Cruise's brilliant career management that few even remember that, around the time of Risky Business and TAPS, he was considered a stick-on member of the Brat Pack, handsome in a raw-boned way – but no Emilio Estevez. What set him apart was his drive and work ethic.

"When I was eight, there was a store up the street that had this sign that said 'Kid needed to bag ice', so I went up there one day. I wanted money so I could go to the movies and the store owner put me in this machine," he recalls.

"So I was in there, you got paid per bag, he closed the thing down and he dressed you in this plastic outfit and plastic gloves," Cruise says, starting to laugh at the memory.

"I'm jamming the ice in there and after about 15 minutes my legs started to go numb. Every bag, I'm thinking, 'OK, I've got the ticket for the movie, now I need the popcorn.

"My hands and my legs were so numb I could barely open the door – but I wanted my own cash at eight.

"When I was making TAPS or Risky Business, I decided, 'I just want to enjoy these moments because I don't know if it's gonna end right here.' I've had opportunities to work with Paul Newman, to work with Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman, Scorsese, Oliver Stone and Spielberg, and that kind of creative freedom that I've been privileged enough to have, I'm really proud of that."

Still, he has had to work to earn back some respect and credibility since his public meltdown in 2005. His close friends in the acting community include Will Smith and Brad Pitt, while he credits David Beckham with devising a recent exercise and diet regime that has helped him shed a stone since he finished Valkyrie. Last year he met with his most public critic, studio boss Sumner Redstone. It was Redstone who ended Cruise's 14-year partnership with Paramount in the form of a bluntly worded rebuke. Redstone now says he wouldn't mind if Cruise stars in the rumoured fourth instalment of Mission: Impossible.

In the critical flop Lions For Lambs, Cruise alone was singled out for a distinguished performance as an ambitious senator, exuding hollow yet impermeable confidence. In Ben Stiller's hit comedy Tropic Thunder a few months ago, he provided some of the most raucous moments by playing a megalomaniac studio boss who celebrated his own meanness and power by dancing like a grotesque Weeble. And incidentally, it may not be the last we've heard from the ferociously forearmed Les Grossman.

"I've talked about doing different videos with the character," Cruise admits. "I've started working with Ben Stiller on it, and we've kind of talked about different things to do. We were gonna do some in our free time, but we haven't found the free time – yet."

Cruise is clearly trying to remind audiences why they liked him in the first place. He's already told his agents to seek out funny scripts, courted Judd Apatow on the set of Knocked Up, and is hoping to star opposite Stiller in the long-gestating buddy comedy Hardy Men. He also plans to act in a 'kids' flick so that his children Connor, 13, Bella, 15, and two-year-old Suri can enjoy watching it. Meanwhile, Connor has just made his own film debut in the upcoming Seven Pounds. Although Cruise encouraged him to audition for the Will Smith picture, he claims he did not call in any favours for Connor.

"They have to earn it," he says earnestly. "There's a point where there is the difference of watching the film industry and, 'Do you want to do it? Do you really want to do it?' But my kids have grown up on movie sets. They're always there. Kate is an actress and she will carry Suri around on stage while she's with the other actors running lines. No matter what, just like when we were kids, they're going to do whatever they want to do.

"That's how I raise my kids – so that they have full exposure to the world, and all different kinds of ideas and possibilities so that they can make choices themselves. Acting is work that I love. I love to create life and give energy, create characters and create stories. I always wanted to entertain an audience, and I feel very privileged to do that. I've been fortunate in having that kind of success. Personal success for me is raising my kids and my family, and that, to me, as much as I love movies, has always been the priority."

The 46-year-old has played many parts in his career, from the horny high school student strumming air guitar in his underwear in Risky Business to the jerky dad redeemed by a global alien invasion in Spielberg's War Of The Worlds. If there's one thing we've learned after all these years, he likes to surprise his audiences, whether it's flying fighter planes in Valkyrie or flamboyantly cursing out Ben Stiller in Tropic Thunder. We may make fun of his recent travails, his appearance in Eyes Wide Shut, or the intensity that causes him to laugh a fraction too loud and too long – but as far as careers go, he may well prove to have the last laugh on anyone who tries to write him off.

"I grew up wanting to travel the world and I wanted an adventurous life," he says.

"Sometimes there was a little more adventure than I had ever bargained for – but this was something I didn't want to pass up on."

Valkyrie is released January 23 valkyrie.unitedartists.com