BY DANIEL BAIG | Tom Cruise strides into the long conference room. I use "strides" deliberately, because that really is how he came in. He didn't just walk in. Instead, he was moving forcefully, rapidly, his legs covering a lot of ground in each step. This was a stride of confidence, and of someone who doesn't like to waste time.

"Is Steven here? Where's Steven? Isn't Steven here?" was what Tom was saying as he strode, in a loud, confident, attention-grabbing voice.

Unfortunately, Steven -- Spielberg -- was not there, and wasn't going to be. This, it was now apparent, was something that Tom had not been told.

I was in one of the smaller ballrooms at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. (If you read my piece about the Scooby-Doo press day, you'll know that I had just arrived there from the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank.) I, and the other reporters in the room with me, was there for a Tom Cruise "press conference." All of us were either online or radio journalists. And unfortunately, Steven wasn't doing radio and online.

But Tom was.

I was especially impressed by Tom's poise when I realized that he had been expecting to do this odd form of interview with Spielberg, together, and just now was finding out, on the spot, that he was expected to fly solo, as it were.

Tom Cruise is one of the biggest stars in the world. Maybe the biggest. And yet he wasn't surrounded by hangers-on, or assistants, or bodyguards. Yes, his infamous press agent Pat Kingsley was there, in the back of the room, but that was it. Tom smilingly greeted us all, and then headed to sit behind the table placed on a low podium in front of us.

We were all sitting in three rows of chairs pulled up quite close to his table. It looked far more intimate than a traditional press conference -- more like a classroom.

One of the more aggressive reporters went up to the table to place his tape recorder down on it, and, taking advantage of the moment, proceeded to joke privately with Tom, even putting his arm on his shoulder. Tom reacted with relative friendliness, seemingly genuinely happy to be talking with this guy. (This to me was proof that Tom Cruise is indeed a talented actor, but to elaborate on that thought I'd have to write more about this journalist.)

Once everybody had positioned their tape recorders and were seated again, Tom looked down at the table in front of him; in addition to all the little mini tape recorders like mine, there were also a number of pretty huge mikes, for the radio folks.

"Hey, what's up?" Tom mock complained. "This is, you know, 2002! Don't they -- they got smaller mikes now!"

I said to him, "They said this is supposed to be like a classroom, so I guess that means you're going to be our teacher."

Tom laughed. "Did they -- is it really?" Then he laughed again, enthusiastically.

Listening to my tape now, I have no idea what was possessing me when I said that. It wasn't a terribly funny remark, and who was the "they" I was referring to? I think I just wanted to make sure I said something to Tom Cruise, and he back to me, just so I could later say that I had, indeed, talked to Tom Cruise. Now I had already gotten that goal out of the way.

And better than that, he had actually seemed amused by what I had said! I was so happy.

Of course, again, now in hindsight I can also remind myself that just before Tom seemed genuinely amused by what I had said, he had also seemed genuinely amused by the creepy reporter who had come up to him and touched him . . . What was that I just wrote a little while ago? Something about Tom Cruise indeed being a talented actor . . .

But back to the press conference.

Another reporter asked Tom something about why it had taken so long for this "cinematic marriage" between him and Steven Spielberg -- which seemed like something "inevitable" -- at which point Tom interrupted, to acknowledge the implied compliment.

"Well, thank you for saying that. That's cool, because . . ." His voice trailed off for a moment before he moved on to answer the question about the length of time this joining of forces had taken -- "To find the material, you know? Uh, I mean, everyone wants to work with Steven. And he and I had been looking. It's hard. It's difficult to find material. It's difficult to find something that he's interested in, that I'm interested in, and that we feel is something that can be really challenging and exciting.

"You know, we came very close on Rain Man to working together, at one point. He was -- he developed it, but he had, he owed a picture. He had to finish -- he had to do a Raiders, the Raiders 3, I guess it was. That was very disappointing for me, because I was so looking forward to working with him. But, just, we -- it happened.

"And you look at -- when did I make Eyes Wide Shut? -- about four years ago or something like that? Three or four years ago. It took that long, from when I read the script and then sent it over to Steven. Then to work on the script. You know, Scott Frank [the project's second screenwriter] came on. That took a lot of time. Working on that story."

"So why," the reporter interrupted, "did you think that this script was the perfect vehicle for you and Steven?"

"I just, I thought when I read it, and then I read the short story [by late science-fiction author Philip K. Dick], it just had great potential. Very cinematic. It was a film that, for a director, very challenging piece to make, because you're creating this world. And it has great characters for an actor, for performance, you know, to play."

Tom went on to talk about how Steven Spielberg gathered scientists and other thinkers together to imagine life in 2052.

"When you read the Philip K. Dick story," he said, "and then you see, when you meet with these scientists, TWhat is the future going [to be like]?', that's where we're going. That will be the future -- I think."

The scene taking place on the magnetic super highway came up.

I asked Tom if he would talk a little about how he filmed his part in it.

He looked at me with a bit of surprise. "That was just all blue screen, and computers."

I was mortified! Did Tom Cruise really think I was a reporter covering movies and yet that uninformed about how they were made? Obviously I hadn't phrased my question well. I sought to clarify: "Yeah, but I mean, your part -- the running and jumping . . . Were you actually jumping on, like, a series of -- ?"

"Yeah, I was jumping from car to car. But, uh, a lot of that stuff, you know, it was amazing how they did that. ILM [Industrial Light & Magic, George Lucas' Marin-based special effects house], you know? You're hanging on the car, the thing's going to flip over now. They'd flip the car, and then I'd have to try to climb up it. You know, I fell a few times. Into the mats. But a lot of that is just all on computer."

A reporter asked him about doing all this physical stuff, now that he's getting older -- "not that you're old," he hastened to add, at which point Tom interrupted --

"Movin' up!! and burst into laughter.

He answered the main question about what he does to physically prepare by saying, "Warm up a lot. I just warm up. Like I always do. At any age you can pull a muscle. And that's just a real pain. . . . I just try to stay flexible."

Tom a little later talked about some of what makes Steven Spielberg a great director --

"He has respect for the screenplay. [And] it makes it easier for an actor when you have a screenplay like [the one for Minority Report]."

Tom revealed that for the scene in which he gets his eyeballs transplanted in the movie, "They numbed my eye. They put numbing drops in my eyes. When I came onto the set, I couldn't see. My eyes were blurry. They sat me down, and opened my eyes."

He was then asked if the world was different with brown eyes. (Since he "switches" eyes in the movie, he has to wear dark colored contact lenses.)

"Yeah! I gotta tell ya! It was great, actually, because I didn't have to wear sunglasses. I've got very sensitive eyes, with hot lights and stuff -- " and at this point he stopped off, because he had seen me nodding sympathetically. I have very photosensitive blue eyes myself, so I totally understood what he was talking about.

He nodded to me -- "You know what it's like. You get light in your eyes, you squint a lot."

(I was pretty thrilled. Tom Cruise had just pointed out that he and I had something in common!)

I asked Tom if the moment in the greenhouse scene in which the character played by actress Lois Smith from out-of-the-blue lays a rather passionate kiss on him was in the script.

"Nope. Steven -- we had the scene, but, I was going down, and he just told her to do it. On one take. He just told her to do it."

The interview was over. Tom started to walk towards me to pass by. I wanted to say something to him, but couldn't think of what. I stood up, and as he came up to me I just stood there like an idiot. He reached out and shook my hand, like it was a thrill for him, grinned at me warmly, and went on his way.