Katie Holmes says daughter’s ‘visible’ childhood has led to wanting to ‘protect’ her

The ‘Dawson’s Creek’ star welcomed daughter Suri with ex-husband Tom Cruise in April 2006

Katie Holmes has reflected on her daughter Suri Cruise’s childhood in the spotlight, and how she’s taking on a more protective role as a mother.

The Dawson’s Creek alum recently posed for the cover of Glamour, where she spoke about her memorable fashion – like the iconic dress over jeans look – and her relationship with her 16-year-old daughter, Suri, whom she shares with ex-husband Tom Cruise.

“What has been really important for me with my daughter, because she was so visible at a young age, is I really like to protect her,” the 44-year-old actor said. “I’m very grateful to be a parent, to be her parent. She’s an incredible person.”

Although Holmes aims to keep her now-teenage daughter’s life private after her paparazzi-filled childhood, the Batman Begins star admitted that she still asks Suri to be involved in every project she works on. The actor even enlisted her daughter to sing “Blue Moon” during the opening credits of her 2022 film, Alone Together, and her upcoming movie, Rare Objects.

“I hope she always does something on my films. I always ask her,” Holmes told Glamour. “But both of those experiences came out of the same sense of what I love about our industry, which is, you have these projects and you become a family with people. And it’s this safe, beautiful, creative space.”

She continued: “So it comes out of love for me to include someone who I love dearly. That’s how I like to work. I like to have that kind of feeling. It was very meaningful to me to have her there, because she’s my heart.”

In April 2006, Holmes welcomed daughter Suri Cruise with then-husband, Tom Cruise. The actors met one year prior and were engaged two months later. Holmes and Cruise tied the knot during an Italian ceremony in November 2006, but Holmes filed for divorce in June 2012 after five years of marriage.

Much of her daughter’s early life was captured by paparazzi, but as the Covid-19 pandemic forced people into lockdown, Holmes shared in an essay for Vogue Australia how the mother-daughter duo have found solace in their newfound private lives.

“Hobbies such as sewing, painting and writing became new hallmarks of satisfaction and having had time at home to just be. To listen. To live for a moment in time without the pressure of results and instead appreciate the natural rhythms of mother and daughter was the most precious gift,” she wrote in 2020.

Most recently, Holmes revealed that she and Suri watched Dawson’s Creek together during the height of the pandemic. The actor was just 19 years old when she starred as Joey Potter on the WB series, which ran from 1998 to 2003.

“She has seen Dawson’s Creek, and I think it’s probably weird since she’s a teenager,” Holmes told Variety in March. “I’m not like, ‘You need to watch mommy’s work.’ But during the pandemic, we had a good laugh about it. It’s wild to have a daughter who’s almost the same age as I was when I began all this.”