Tom Cruise’s daughter is about to make her Hollywood debut and the one question on people’s minds is her relationship with the Mission Impossible star.

To answer this burning question a well placed source has come forward.

This source spoke rather candidly about the matter and explained right off the bat, “when he and Katie split, everything was so explosive and painful he felt like the only choice he had was to basically give in to her demands, which meant taking a giant step back and pretty much letting her have complete and total custody.”

But since then, “he has mellowed a lot” they added, so “there’s no doubt that if he could take it all back and do things differently, he would.”

The insider also said at one point in the conversation, “at the time everyone advising him felt it was the best course of action, but no one ever imagined it would result in him having no contact with his daughter for this long. He’s always maintained that his goal was to protect her by saving her from a horrendous custody battle so naturally the people close to him feel he made an incredibly selfless decision for her benefit and sadly the reward has been total alienation.”

Before concluding they also admitted, “even when she was just a toddler, he’d tell friends he could already see she had a natural gift for performing, so seeing her choosing the path he predicted she’d take so many years ago is very bittersweet. It fills him with enormous pride because he always believed she had that spark. He’d love nothing more than to be able to share in this journey with her and he hasn’t given up hope that one day that will happen.”