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Either the emotional trauma of Tom Cruise's abrupt separation from longtime partner Paramount made him suddenly introspective about how the couch-pounding, psychiatry-slamming antics of the last year might have negatively affected other people in his crazycentric orbit, or his PR team finally convinced him to do some long-overdue damage control to save what's left of his image, but the star is finally showing a heretofore unseen humbler, apologetic side. Earlier today, he sent a lovely flower arrangement to new The View host and longtime platonic stalker Rosie O'Donnell to ask her forgiveness for his continuing failure to become a lesbian, but even that touching gesture was far overshadowed by his recent, contrite housecall to his recovering street-drug-addict nemesis, Brooke Shields:

"He came over to my house, and he gave me a heartfelt apology," Shields said Friday during an appearance on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." "And he apologized for bringing me into the whole thing and for everything that happened.

"And through it all, I was so impressed with how heartfelt it was. And I didn't feel at any time that I had to defend myself, nor did I feel that he was trying to convince me of anything other than the fact that he was deeply sorry. And I accepted it."

Once she accepted the apology, however, things became newly awkward when a nanny carrying Shields' infant daughter Grier happened by the reconciling friends, and Cruise, taking the baby in his arms, intimated that things "weren't really working out with the Suri unit," and that he was "in the market for a normal-sized one who might photograph a little better." But once Shields snatched back her daughter and assured the star that she wasn't for sale, Cruise quickly bid her goodbye, muttering, "I bet that's the Zoloft talking," as he headed for the door, undoing much of the good will he'd intended to generate.