Last week Hello! Magazine in the UK featured some quotes from Tom Cruise about the state of his marriage two years on. He said “And they said it wouldn’t last. I guess we proved them wrong, didn’t we?”

This latest Hello! has more words of wisdom from the 46 year-old 5’7″ screen star in an exclusive interview. The quotes he gives about Suri refusing to wear pants have already been reported as he either said the same thing to Entertainment Tonight, or they’re quoting the Hello! Interview, but there’s some additional interesting information about how he views his daughter and wife, along with his relationship with the media.

The Daily Mail has some of these quotes, but they’re taking them from Grazia. Either Grazia just switched Cruise’s statements around a little and reprinted them from Hello! or Cruise repeated himself to them. Hello! changed some of his words to Brit-speak too: (update: it was at a press conference, see below.)

On Katie and Suri both being “determined”
“Suri’s very much like her mother. She’s open and sunny, just like her Mom is, but she’s also very determined. She’s very much a girl, and she will not wear trousers, for instance, only dresses. I put a pair of trousers on her and turn and leave the room, and straight away the trousers are off and a dress is on instead.”

On Suri saying sneakers are “boy shoes”
“She also has opinions about shoes. The other day, Kate showed her some gold-coloured sneakers – you know those gold sneakers that little girls have these days? – thinking she might like to wear them, and she looked at them and said, ‘Oh Mommy, these are lovely but… they’re boy shoes.’ She’s sweet but she’s very strong-willed – just like her mother.

On Kate being such a great mother
“Kate’s a wonderful mother, very calm and very loving. She’s a woman who’s sure of herself, confident and strong. She’s incredibly wise as well as being a very gracious and elegant person. I adore her.

“Well, we all know how I feel about Kate, right?”

On the media backlash at their whirlwind romance
“I guess I did court her kind of aggressively. There were things I did at the time that I look back and think, ‘Well, okay, I could have handled a couple of moments of that a little better.’ But I was surprised at some of the things that were said about me at the time. It all escalated until it got to the point where I’d hear another piece of gossip about me, and think, ‘Whaaaat? It can’t get worse than this.’ It affected us all, and as a father and a husband you want to protect your family. You want to be able to say to them, ‘Look, you don’t have to worry about anything. It’s all going to be all right.'”

On Kate being a “strong woman”
“Kate is such a strong woman, her entire family are incredible people, and certainly so are my children, Isabella and Connor.”

Tom goes on to talk about how it was when Suri was born and how it wasn’t as stressful for him because he knew the drill from Isabella and Connor. He says “I’m much more relaxed with Suri.”

Claims Suri doesn’t “have to deal with” fame
“She doesn’t have to deal with it.” [Talking about the Forbes story ranking her top baby] “When we’re not working we lead a very normal life with her, with friends over and ordinary stuff. You want to protect your children, but you don’t want to bring them up to be afraid of people. Suri’s a very open and warm child, and we want to preserve that, which we’re doing by giving her a lot of love. All she knows is that she is number one to Kate and me. And that’s all that matters.

[From Hello! Magazine, print edition, December 2, 2008. Commentary and subtitles are our own]

How many different ways can Tom say that Katie gets her way? Why doesn’t he just call her a stubborn pain in the ass and be done with it? It’s funny because whenever he starts to say something negative about her, like about how she’s strong willed, he immediately switches back to “incredible,” “amazing” mode and praises her.

According to the Daily Mail, he also told Grazia that some of the shots of little Suri by the paparazzi are “incredible.” Here he said that “she doesn’t have to deal with [fame]” and maybe he meant the broader aspects of fame, but Suri is often seen crying and looking visibly upset by the paparazzi surrounding her family and screaming her name. She’s surely affected by it and no amount of “love” and letting her get her way can make up for that. You get that Tom wants to play nice with the media, but he would do well to speak out a little against aggressive photographers.

Update: Cruise essentially said the same thing to The Mirror, and as Agent Bedhead points out he was giving a press conference.

Tom and Katie are shown having lunch with her family at Balthazar restaurant in NY on Halloween. Credit: Bauergriffin. Suri is shown out with her mom eating a cupcake on 11/24/08. Credit: WENN