Hello! Magazine has a retrospective on Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ two year marriage, including quotes from insiders on how they make it all work. Some of Hello!’s sources are named, and seem to have dependable, maybe pre-approved, insight on the Hollywood couple who look, dress, speak, and smile vacantly alike. They even have a few tidbits from Cruise himself, who says he was taken by surprise by the romance. Hello! says that Katie met Tom while auditioning for a role on MI3, and it sounds like that information comes directly from Cruise, although it’s hard to tell. Katie was largely rumored to have been among a pool of actresses to have been invited to a personal meeting with Cruise with the purpose of finding him a famous girlfriend. Scarlett Johansson and Jessica Alba are among the other young women who were asked to an interview with him at the Scientology Centre. It turned out well no matter the intent of their meeting, and Cruise says that they proved their critics wrong by lasting two years.

Tom Cruise: ‘And they said it wouldn’t last. I guess we proved them wrong’
“And they said it wouldn’t last.” Those were Tom Cruise’s words a couple of weeks ago after I congratulated him on the approaching second anniversary of his marriage to Katie Holmes.

We were backstage… in NY City after one of Katie’s performances… “I guess we proved them wrong, didn’t we?” Tom laughed.

It’s certainly true that many believed the union of Tom and Katie was destined to fail. “It’s because it came out of left field,” the 46-year-old actor reasoned. “I get it. It was a big surprise to us, so why wouldn’t it be the same to everyone else?”

On how they met: it was a MI3 audition
So, exactly how did it happen? Tom and 29-year-old Katie seldom talk about how they met, preferring to keep such personal stories sacred between them. So, on the occasion of their anniversary on 18 November, here’s the true story of their modern-day fairytale.

Back on 11 April 2005, Katie flew from NY to LA to audition for a possible role in the Tom Cruise movie, Mission: Impossible III However, after she met Tom, the movie became the farthest thing from her mind. “The chemistry between us was instantaneous,” she later explained. “If ever there was love at first sight, that was it. Tom was the most lethally attractive man I have ever met.”

His intellect, his drive, his sense of humour… his good looks – Katie said she was bowled over by all of it. As it happened, he felt the same way about her. “She is an absolutely spectacular woman,” is how he put it. In fact, the two spent so much time savouring each other’s company, they didn’t even discuss the movie.

[From Hello! Magazine, print edition, November 25, 2008]

The insiders quoted by Hello! give some information about the goings-on in the TomKat marriage. Katie is said to have been overwhelmed and afraid by the paparazzi attention right after Suri was born, but Tom told her that it would pass. She soon learned to handle it and matured quickly in the past two years to say the least.

A source claims that Tom was reluctant for Katie to return to work after Suri was born because he thought it would be too much given his dual career experience with his ex Nicole. She gradually convinced him though by waiting and letting him warm up to the idea before she took the role in Mad Money and then on Broadway.

There does seem to be some trouble in paradise as Katie is said to want to stay in NY while Tom is jetting back and forth from LA. That isn’t in Hello! though, and is reported in the November 24 issue of Star, so it’s likely completely fabricated. These two aren’t going away anytime soon unfortunately, although lasting two years isn’t really proving critics wrong. Maybe by Hollywood standards it is.

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are shown in the header on 10/31/08 and below on 10/20/08. Credit: WENN