Katie Holmes finds Tom Cruise is "Mission: Impossible"

LOS ANGELES: Actress Katie Holmes has filed for divorce from her superstar husband Tom Cruise, ending a six-year marriage that produced one daughter and captivated celebrity watchers worldwide.

Holmes filed papers in New York City on Thursday, citing irreconcilable differences and seeking sole custody of the couple's six-year-old daughter Suri in a move that came "out of the blue" for the "Mission: Impossible" actor, said one source with knowledge of the situation.

The source said Cruise is out of the country filming a movie in Iceland and the filing came as a surprise.

The actor's spokeswoman issued a brief statement, saying: "Kate has filed for divorce and Tom is deeply saddened and is concentrating on his three children. Please allow them their privacy to work this out." No further comment was made

Los Angeles-based attorney Bert Fields, who has represented Cruise in other matters but is not handling the divorce, confirmed the filing but declined to give further details.

"Tom wants to be very private," Fields said.

Earlier on Friday, People magazine quoted Holmes' attorney Jonathan Wolfe as calling it "a personal and private matter for Katie and her family ... Katie's primary concern remains, as it always has been, her daughter's best interest."

The couple's marriage, which began at an elaborate, Italian castle wedding in November 2006, has been closely followed by the celebrity press ever since the pair, dubbed TomKat, began dating in 2005.

At the time, Holmes, now 33, was a rising star and Hollywood ingénue who found fame on TV's "Dawson's Creek" and earned her acting chops in independent films such as "Pieces of April."

Cruise, 16 years her senior, was among Hollywood's highest paid stars who enjoyed a string of box office blockbusters in action flicks ranging from 1986's "Top Gun" to his "Mission: Impossible" movies that began in 1996 and continue today.

He proposed to Holmes atop the Eiffel Tower in Paris and famously went on Oprah Winfrey's talk show, jumped on her couch and shouted out his love for Holmes in front of a TV audience of millions.

Cruise, a practitioner of Scientology, was previously married to actress Mimi Rogers and actress Nicole Kidman, with whom he has two children.

Holmes' marriage to Cruise was her first. (Reuters)

Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol (Movie Review)

A bright, whirling, action-movie toy, the J.J. Abrams-produced “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol” is certainly entertaining, although lacking suspense and surprise. Watching one of the film’s trademark stunts, I thought to myself, “Tom Cruise, you have some explaining to do to Bruce Willis.”

Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his team of IMF agents are back — minus Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) for the most part, but with Brit tech whiz Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg, who’s worth his weight in sidekick gold) still aboard — this time directed by Brad Bird of Pixar fame in his first-ever live-action outing.

What Bird brings to the table is the genius Pixar touch: He turns Ethan and his fellow agents into a variation of the superhero family of “The Incredibles.”

New to the team are warrior princess Jane Carter (alarmingly gorgeous Paula Patton, “Precious”) and seeming desk jockey William Brandt (Jeremy Renner, “The Town”).

Blamed for a 9/11-like bombing of the Kremlin, the team members are disavowed by the U.S. president, who evokes “Ghost Protocol.” (I know, what?) The truth is the IMF team is on the trail of Swedish madman Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist of the great Swedish trilogy “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”), who is intent on starting a nuclear world war using Russian missiles.

This time around, Renner is the one who leaps from a high perch only to stop midair — inches before fatally crashing. Cruise, for his part, scales the world’s tallest building with nothing more than a pair of not-very-reliable, computerized suction gloves (like I said, paging Elastigirl).

What Bird and the screenwriting team of Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec don’t get is that just photographing Cruise standing at an open window near the top of the 2,217-foot-high Burj Khalifa building in Dubai is sufficient to amaze and terrify the audience.

The rest of the stuff is extraneous and familiar. The best bit in the film is a truly amazing, high-tech illusion the IMF team pulls off in the Kremlin.

If you want to watch the film for it being shot in India, and for Anil Kapoor, you'll be sorely disappointed. Only two minutes of actual India make it to the film.

The other shots thought to be filmed in the country, have actually been shot in Indian localities of North America. Kapoor barely has a few minutes' role as a lecherous business tycoon. It's not enough either for his fans or his detractors.

These “Mission: Impossible” films, which kicked off in 1996, have been Cruise’s attempt to create a James Bond-like franchise for himself, and while Cruise has succeeded at the box office, the films have been hit-and-miss, and Ethan Hunt is no James Bond.

Still, this “M:I” is a lot of fun. No one’s going to pretend this film is deep or meaningful but, at its best, it really is pretty awesome.