Katie Holmes says her and ex Tom Cruise's 10-year-old daughter Suri is the most important person in her life and she is determined to give the child a "stable, innocent childhood" despite her growing up under media scrutiny.
The world first got a glimpse of the girl, the star's only child, five months after she was born in 2006, when Vanity Fair ran a cover story and pictorial featuring the family together. Over the years, including before and after Holmes and Cruise's 2012 divorce, paparazzi have often followed the actress and her daughter.
"My child is the most important person to me, and her upbringing is paramount to my work right now," Holmes told Town & Country magazine, which features her on the cover of its April 2017 issue. "It's very important that I'm present and she has a stable, innocent childhood. I feel so blessed to do what I do, but there's nothing in the world better than watching your child succeed."
"Every day, kids get a little further away from you," she added. "That's a positive thing. They should be becoming more independent, but it's heartbreaking. You want them to stay with you forever, but they're these amazing beings, and you have to do everything you can to give them what they need—and then they're going to go. And that's going to be very, very sad for me."
Holmes also talked to Town & Country about her newest acting project, the mini-series The Kennedys After Camelot, in which she plays Jackie Kennedy for the second time onscreen. It deals with late former President John F. Kennedy's wife's life as a widow and single mother to teens and shows how she raises them in the public eye.
With regard to the former aspect, Holmes can certainly relate.
"To experience something publicly and privately is a lot for a person to go through," she said. "In today's world a lot of celebrities probably shield their children from the tabloids; in my household we know what they print isn't true, so we don't pay attention. There are more important things. But it's very relatable to me; if people know who you are, they might write about you, and you can't control that."