From Zap2it.com

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) — Tom Cruise offered his most extensive public personal interview to date Monday night (Oct. 25) at UCLA discussing his career, family, Scientology and a few secrets he’s never before divulged.
“I’ve never done anything like this before, with showing clips,” says Cruise, laughing as he watched many of his movies shown on a big screen at a capacity crowd of 1,800 in Royce Hall. His family and friends, as well as longtime collaborator Paula Wagner was in the audience watching.

“A Conversation with Tom Cruise” was sponsored by the American Film Institute and run by DreamWorks, and although it was filmed for UCLA archival purposes, there were strict restrictions about recording the informative chat, with some journalists’ tape recorders and cameras confiscated during the nearly three-hour retrospective of his career.

Wearing a black leather jacket, black shirt and jeans, Cruise spent an hour before the event chatting with a few dozen film critics and entertainment journalists at a reception. Then, he relaxed in a lounge chair on stage while writer Chris Connelly asked questions and fielded questions from the crowd, who gave the actor three standing ovations.

Earlier in the day he says he was on the set of a remake of “War of the Worlds” with Steven Spielberg. He says he was doing an emotional scene as Justin Chatwin, an estranged father in the middle of a Martian invasion of Earth.

“As I was looking at a photograph I found of my son in the scene, Steven told me to think of the good times I had with my own son, and to get into the mood that way,” Cruise explains. “Things like that really help.”

But, unlike many of his fellow actors, he’s not into Method Acting, saying, “I tried it and it doesn’t work for me.”

Other notable secrets Cruise revealed include:

His goal is to climb Mount Everest. “That’s been a dream of mine, I’m not a great climber, but I enjoy it,” the actor says.
He wants to work again with Jamie Foxx and Jada Pinkett Smith whom he did “Collateral” with and especially wants to find a project to do with Jada’s husband, Will Smith.
“I would love to do a musical, if you the audience could suffer through it,” he laughs.
He wants to do a play, too. “I’ve been offered stage work, it would be fun, but I haven’t done it.”
He blushes as he admits he does still recreate that famous underwear dance in “Risky Business” when he’s at home alone. He calls it his “dance of freedom.” Cruise discussed his early days of doing imitations of Donald Duck as John Wayne when he was 4 years old (and he demonstrated a few duck sneezes), and he loved movies so much he convinced his family to go see “Jaws” on opening day.

After watching himself in his first film “Taps” with Sean Penn and Timothy Hutton, as well as about a dozen other films, he explains tidbits about each movie. He says he was offered “a ton of money” for “Top Gun 2″ and strung the studio on a bit with no intention of ever doing it. He spent two years with Dustin Hoffman for “Rain Man” and a lot of it was ad-libbed, he spent a whole year with Stanley Kubrick for “Eyes Wide Shut” until he told the director, “I have to go.” He doesn’t like long makeup sessions and insisted on complex makeup for “An Interview with a Vampire” and “Vanilla Sky” to take no more than 40 minutes.

He also says he spent four months preparing for his role in “Magnolia,” which he shot in one-and-a-half weeks. It earned him a best supporting actor nomination.

He says he became a Scientologist after filming “The Color of Money” with Paul Newman, and explains, “it is an applied religious philosophy and it’s rehabilitative for me as a n artist, as a father, as a brother, as an American, and it helps me appreciate other cultures even more.”

Outside, before the chat, students posed with Cruise for photographs, some taken by his publicist/sister, and he signed posters, stills, DVDs, albums and even a few term papers.

He waved off compliments about being a superstar, saying, “I’ve never met a normal person. Every person has a story to tell, something moving, sad, funny and powerful, and I appreciate that in everyone.”

Next year, the actor will be starting “Mission: Impossible III” in Europe.