Katie Holmes and Suri Cruise
Katie Holmes says she was initially "a very nervous mother."
The 35-year-old actress, who has daughter Suri, eight, with ex-husband Tom Cruise, whom she split from in 2012 after six years of marriage, insists he had nothing to do with her decision to only take on a handful of acting roles while they were together and she wanted to stay at home with their little girl.
She said: "I totally admire women who go back to work six weeks after giving birth but when she was little, I was not ready. I was a very nervous mother -- like, sleeping next to her crib -- and I was in that mode for a long time."
The 'Giver' star - who has already worked on six different movies this year - also admits she wasn't offered a lot of opportunities at the time.
She said: "It's the life of an actor. We don't really have a lot of choice in the matter. You have dry spells, and then you have times when there is a lot of opportunity."
She added: "It's been an interesting journey. Even when I was young, I was like, 'I hope I'm taking all of this in.'"
The former 'Dawson's Creek' star claims she used to be terrified of getting fired.
She told DuJour magazine: "I think I've gotten more comfortable with acting over time. Early on, I could never get out of my head. I'd be thinking, 'I have to get the job.' And even when I had the job, I was afraid that I was going to get fired, or I just had the mentality of, 'I need to be good enough.' But the more projects you do, the older you get, the more life experience you get, you start to understand storytelling better. So you're a little bit more confident going in. You're not afraid of getting fired: You just want to contribute."
Tagged in Tom Cruise Katie Holmes