Katie Holmes is ready for daughter Suri Cruise to start her next chapter.
“I’m proud of my daughter,” Holmes, 45, shared in her Town & Country cover story, published on Tuesday, August 13, discussing her 18-year-old’s upcoming foray into college life. “Of course, I will miss the close proximity, but I’m really proud of her and I’m happy.”
This allowed Holmes to reflect on her own teenage years.
“I remember being this age, this time of beginnings,” the actress said. “It’s exciting to learn about yourself, and I loved that time, so it makes me happy to think about it like that.”
Holmes shares Suri with ex-husband Tom Cruise, to whom she was married from 2006 to 2012.
At 19, Holmes nabbed her starring role as Joey Potter in Dawson’s Creek, forgoing the traditional college experience. She played the role on the famed WB series from 1998 to 2003. Holmes previously said she “really appreciated the writing” on the show, which really showcased what she was going through at the time.
“I felt like, as a teenager, I had so many different feelings, trying to go from being a girl to a woman,” Holmes said in April 2023 about growing up on the Dawson’s Creek set. “And I felt like [creator Kevin Williamson] had this way of putting words to those feelings.”
She was able to go through a period of self-discovery while working on Dawson’s Creek.
“For me, playing that role, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s what that means. Oh, I get that,’” she recalled in the same interview. “I loved doing it. It was a really fun, profound experience.”
While Suri hasn’t followed in her mom’s acting footsteps just yet, she has gotten a chance to watch Dawson’s Creek. (Suri has, however, appeared on the soundtrack for two Holmes’ movies, Alone Together and Rare Objects.)
“She has seen Dawson’s Creek, and I think it’s probably weird since she’s a teenager,” Holmes told Variety in March 2023. “I’m not like, ‘You need to watch mommy’s work.’ But during the pandemic, we had a good laugh about it. It’s wild to have a daughter who’s almost the same age as I was when I began all this.”
For now, Holmes is gearing up for life as an empty nester. “The members of my book club are going to get annoyed hearing from me,” Holmes joked to Town & Country. “I’ll be like, ‘Let’s meet once a week.’”
