Tom Cruise thrills the crowds

Tom Cruise wowed 4,000 screaming fans packed into Leicester Square with a another major charm offensive.

The Hollywood star spent 90 minutes on a walkabout - delaying the premiere of his movie, Minority Report, by 40 minutes.

Clearly loving the occasion, he signed autographs, posed for dozens of photographs and talked to fans' family and friends on their mobile phones.

He told the Standard: "I enjoy this, it's really fun. I've been talking to the people here, as well as a lot of family members on the phone. A lot of people don't believe it's me when I talk down the line."

Lisa Thornborrow, 22, who has just graduated from university, nearly lost her phone as Cruise started wandering around the square, talking to her suprised mother Ellen.

"It was lovely" said Miss Thornborrow, who was with her boyfriend Ryan Homer, a 26-year-old fitness instructor. "My mum didn't believe it was Tom Cruise on the line at first. He walked off with my phone and kept talking to her, and eventually she realised it was him. She loved him in Top Gun.."

Cruise has never let his London fans down. In January, 200 fans packed Leicester Square for Vanilla Sky and he spent an hour mingling with them, together with his co-star and partner Penelope Cruz, 27.

But with the Spanish actress busy filming, his female companion last night was his costar in the movie, Britain's Samantha Morton. The 25-year-old from a broken home has already been nominated for an Oscar and is on the verge of becoming a major Hollywood star.

But nine years ago she was penniless and pregnant teenager living in a bedsit with her boyfriend after her parents had split up and her father had set up home in Nottingham with a teenage prostitute.

Somehow she managed to pull her life back together, won a place at a drama school and went on to land parts in Cracker, Peak Practice, Soldier Soldier and Band of Gold. Roles in period dramas Tom Jones and Jane Eyre followed, before she got her big break in Woody Allen's 1999 movie Sweet and Lowdown.

In Minority Report, a £60 million movie from Steven Spielberg, she plays a psychic who is able to foretell when a murder is to be committed. The film and is tipped to be one of this summer's blockbusters.

Adapted from a story by sci-fi writer Philip K Dick, whose work was also the basis for film classic Blade Runner, it is set in Washington DC in 2054.

Cruise plays a police officer in the Pre-Crime Division which uses psychic technology to arrest and convict murderers before they commit any offences.

But Cruise's character is stunned when he is identified as a future murderer and sets off in a race against time to find his intended victim and avert the crime.

Among the guests at last night's premiere was American actress Brenda Swanson, who is preparing a £10million lawsuit against her former boyfriend Steve Bing for defamation of character. She claims Bing, the father of Liz Hurley's baby Damian, lied about their relationship.

Cruise, 39, arrived at the Odeon wearing a gunmetal gray suit, matching tie, white shirt and sunglasses. He was also sporting a brace on his teeth. He said a dentist advised him to wear it four months ago when he took children Isabella, nine, and Connor, seven, to a routine appointment.

"I've had difficulty closing my mouth my whole life and when I went to the dentist he said he could fix it for me," Cruise said.