Tom Cruise is doing a ton of promotion for his upcoming film “Valkyrie.” And surprisingly enough, he’s managed to stay out of trouble so far, which I find utterly perplexing. In an upcoming interview with Details, Tom says that he identifies with his character, Claus von Stauffenberg, who attempted to assassinate Hitler.

He won’t go into the other hardships; appearing to ask for sympathy would be … un-Cruise-worthy. But he clearly felt a connection to Stauffenberg, his crisis of conscience and his conflicting loyalties. “Certain decisions at points in my life … I absolutely related,” he says. “Stauffenberg went from saying, ‘Someone should shoot that bastard’ to realizing, I’m the only one who can do it. You can’t really know until you’re under that kind of pressure. I’m not saying this in some chest-pounding way, but I do feel I’d have that kind of courage.”

[From Details]

I tried to guess which decisions Tom could have been talking about, but he’s got such a grandiose opinion of himself that it’s hard to figure out when he thought he was doing something bold and courageous. Jumping on Oprah’s couch? I mean that thing’s held a lot of people; it could have broken. Telling off Matt Lauer? Waving the Scientology banner and never backing down? Certainly not impossible.

Tom says he’s learned to ignore the haters. Okay that’s not how he phrases it, but that’s the point.

Do you really doubt he can pull it off? To get Valkyrie made, he had to win over a country that was trying outlaw his religion—one German official called him “the Joseph Goebbels of Scientology”—and refused to let him shoot at the army’s historic Berlin headquarters, the Benderblock. The tabloids feasted and the nabobs of negativity nattered every time it seemed Cruise’s comeback vehicle had blown a tire, but the star prevailed. “That was always just a small group,” he says of his German critics. “When there was finally dialogue between us and they realized what it was we were doing with the story, they relented. This was a hard movie to make on many levels—but that was just one challenge.”

[From Details]

Tom gives the whole interview over the phone and mentions that Suri is there, falling asleep on his lap. He’s talked a lot about his wife and daughter in the last few days, which at first made it seem like he was back to the good ‘ol Tom who couldn’t think of anything more interesting to talk about than his personal life while promoting a movie.

It turns out it was all from the same press conference but many of the tabloids wrote the story up like it was an original interview. Details’ story is clearly not from the press conference and Tom does a pretty good job of sticking to promoting his film. He brings his ego into it – hey, he’s Tom Cruise, we can expect no less – but seems to have figured out a few of the finer points of public relations and keeps it short.

However the film is getting panned – and something tells me all the good press in the world won’t help.