From biz.yahoo.com:

Tom Cruise Sits Down for Exclusive Interview on E! Entertainment Television Premiering Sunday, August 1 at 9 p.m. ET/PT
Monday July 12, 6:03 pm ET
Says Cruise, ‘I want to be a good father, let me say that. I want to be the best friend. I want to be the greatest father. I want to be the greatest son. I want to be the greatest boyfriend there ever was.’

LOS ANGELES, July 12 /PRNewswire/ — In a rare one-on-one interview, Tom Cruise sits down exclusively with E! for an inside and revealing conversation about his childhood and his journey to becoming one of the entertainment world’s most respected and beloved actors. Cruise opens up about becoming a parent during his 10-year marriage to Nicole Kidman, his relationships with family, friends and colleagues, as well as events that changed his life and define who he is today. The one-hour Tom Cruise: An E! Entertainment Special premiering Sunday, August 1 at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT, features exclusive family home video and never-before-televised childhood photos of Cruise and his family. Also featured in the special are exclusive interviews with Cruise’s friends and colleagues including Paula Wagner, Ron Howard, Sydney Pollack, Rob Reiner and Collateral co-star Jamie Foxx.

His movie roles often reflect a level of fearlessness, which Cruise says he possesses in real life, largely to his mother’s credit. “She never grabbed me (as a child) and said that you (could) get hit by a car, you’d get kidnapped … She didn’t do that.” As a small boy, Cruise admits to wandering off from home for hours at a time. Laughs Cruise, “(She’d say), ‘Tom, that’s really, that’s good, I’m glad that you want to do that, but next time you do that, come and get me and I promise you, whatever I’m doing I’ll stop and we’ll go do it together.’ You kind of look back going, ‘Man, that was incredible.'” Cruise says his mother now laughs about allowing her children a sense of freedom. Admits Cruise, “She goes, ‘Well, honey,’ she said, ‘I bit my tongue, so, you know, I have scars on my tongue. You haven’t seen the inside of my mouth.'”

On becoming a parent himself during his marriage with Nicole Kidman, Cruise relates, “You can’t articulate that, that moment. The sense of awe, the sense of responsibility. No matter how much you think about it beforehand, where … Nic and I were going, ‘What’s it gonna be like?’ And then that moment of looking down … it’s powerful, you know, both of them. And they’re beautiful.”

Cruise wants to set an example as a parent to his children by keeping his word, something he says he didn’t always get from his own father. “How am I going be, as a man, as a father, as someone that they can trust … because I so wanted them to know that I’m there for (them) … When I say I’m going do something, it was an early thing that I decided that no matter what … I keep to that. Because I remember that as a kid with my father that certain promises, that things didn’t happen and … not even that I sit here and blame him, but it was just, it was just I wanted, I wanted him to know that.”

On relationships, Cruise says, “I like being in a relationship, I have to admit … I’ve enjoyed the relationships that I have had but and it’s not something where I am not a human being unless I have (one) … because I have a very full life and I’m really happy with that but … I like that thing, taking care of a woman, and having those moments in bed at night or … those moments where you look at each other right before you jump off a cliff into the water.”

E! Entertainment Television continues to offer viewers exclusive one-on- one interviews with the world’s biggest stars, as well as comprehensive red carpet coverage of the entertainment industry’s award shows, including the Oscars®, Emmys® and Golden Globes®.

Based in Los Angeles, E! Networks is the world’s largest producer and distributor of entertainment news and lifestyle-related programming. The company operates E! Entertainment Television, the 24-hour network with programming dedicated to the world of entertainment; The Style Network, where life gets a new look, and E! Online, located at Eonline.com. E! is currently available to 85 million cable and direct broadcast satellite subscribers in the U.S. The Style Network currently counts 36 million subscribers with commitments to reach over 40 million in 2004. E! Online, the #1 entertainment news and celebrity gossip Website, reaches 6 million monthly unique U.S. adult users.