LA Times Interviews Makers of Valkyrie

The LA Times features a long and detailed interview with Cruise, Singer, and McQuarrie, makers of Valkyrie.

In it, among many other things, they talk about Cruise being misunderstood:

When Cruise is asked if he feels misunderstood, Singer and McQuarrie jump in with the passion. [...]

"He's totally misunderstood. [...]

"You spend the first two weeks waiting for the . . . that you think Tom is to manifest itself. And after a year and half, you realize that is not who he is. . . . He gets a bad rap."

"He is a really great guy," chimes in McQuarrie. "He's a generous person. He works very hard. He is exceedingly professional. There is no hierarchy of any kind on the set. We would have . . . somebody's mother came to visit the set and Tom would spend the afternoon having lunch with that person's mother."

Cruise is more subdued about the vagaries of being Cruise. "I can't spend my time worrying about it," he says. As a kid, he moved constantly. "I was always the new kid. I went to different schools and I would hear back rumors about where I came from."

Now it's the same phenomenon, but "on a world stage, and sometimes it gets even very extreme and you've got to laugh about it. And some of it you kind of go, OK. OK, as in breathe, be Zen, ignore what you cannot control."