Tom Cruise: I Did Not Say Acting is as Hard as Fighting in Afghanistan

Tom Cruise has denied allegations that he likened his acting career to a soldier fighting in Afghanistan.

The Hollywood star's lawyer Bert Fields insisted that the comments, taken from a court deposition for a $50 million libel case the actor has brought against Life & Style and In Touch magazines, were taken out of context.

Cruise is suing the publication over articles which claimed that he abandoned his daughter Suri in the wake of his divorce from Katie Holmes.

"The assertions that Tom Cruise likened making a movie to being at war in Afghanistan is a gross distortion of the record," Fields said in a statement. "What Tom said, laughingly, was that sometimes, 'That's what it feels like.'"

The allegations that Cruise compared his gruelling acting schedule to a military tour of duty were initially made by gossip site TMZ.

The site published only part of the court deposition from legal documents, in which the 51-year-old gave the reasons behind not having contact with his daughter Suri for extended periods during the shooting of thriller Edge of Tomorrow aka All You Need Is Kill.

During his deposition, it was brought to Cruise's attention that his lawyers had likened his time on movie sets to serving in Afghanistan.

Upon hearing this, the Mission Impossible star said: "I didn't hear the Afghanistan [part], but that's what it feels like, and certainly on this last movie [Edge Of Tomorrow], it was brutal. It was brutal."

According to Fields an unreleased video of the deposition shows that Cruise was not being serious about the comparison.

"As the video shows, he and the lawyer were laughing at his answer, and, when asked in the next question if the situations were comparable, Tom said 'oh, come on,' meaning of course not," he said.

During the same court proceedings Cruise admitted that Scientology was at the centre of his split with Holmes as she longed to break away from the controversial religion.

Suri is no longer a member of the Church of Scientology.