Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have revealed they are divorcing after five years of marriage.

The Hollywood superstar, 49, said he was ‘deeply saddened’ that Katie, 33, had filed for a separation.

Tom revealed that the former Dawson's Creek actress had initiated the split, bringing a dramatic end to one of Hollywood's most high-profile romances.

In a move that has come as quite a shock to the rest of the world, Katie is understood to have filed for sole custody of the couple's daughter Suri, six.

'This is a personal and private matter for Katie and her family,' Katie's lawyer Jonathan Wolfe said in a statement to People magazine.

'Katie's primary concern remains, as it always has been, her daughter's best interest.'

A spokesperson for Tom, who is currently in Iceland filming his new sci-fi movie Oblivion, said: 'Kate has filed for divorce and Tom is deeply saddened and is concentrating on his three children.'

The actress filed documents in New York this week citing 'irreconcilable differences'. She has asked for legal custody, primary residential custody and a 'suitable amount' of child support from her husband, TMZ reports.

In addition she has asked for the division of their property, although no mention of their pre-nuptial agreement is mentioned in the documents. The couple are worth a staggering $275 million, much of that owing to Tom's box office success.

Katie is said to have told her husband of five-and-a-half years that she was filing for divorce, but she didn’t give him a chance to control the spread of the news, as he did with Nicole Kidman. The fact that she issued a solo statement speaks volumes about the end of their union.

The pair have not been seen together in public for almost three months; they were last pictured on April 5 while in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Furthermore, Katie failed to turn up to at any of the worldwide premieres of her husband’s latest film Rock of Ages, despite Tom’s constant protestations of love for his wife.

The final arguments seem to have been over where Cruise was going to spend his 50th birthday on Tuesday. He told her that he was planning to be on the set of his latest film Oblivion in Iceland and that seems to have been the last straw for her.

The gorgeous brunette had frequently been pictured looking drawn and exhausted during her marriage. One Hollywood source said she had been ‘utterly miserable with Tom for months, if not years’.

Indeed, the row over his birthday followed another bust-up over what Katie felt were embarrassingly bad taste pictures of him on the cover of W magazine last month. The photo's saw him dressed – or rather undressed – as the rock star Stacee Jaxx, the character he plays in Rock of Ages. Two half dressed blondes were wrapped around him, one licking his face.

Katie was apparently ‘speechless’ with disgust and felt the pictures laid both of them open to ridicule.

Katie has chosen to stay with Suri in Tom’s New York apartment while he has travelled the world working. Suri has been her constant and only companion lately, and they are often photographed out together until late at night, and Katie – who gave up all the threads of her old life to become Mrs Tom Cruise – seems to have no other friends at all.

One Hollywood source said: ‘It was an open secret that she was utterly miserable with Tom, and had been for months if not years. They really couldn’t drag out the pretence any longer.’

When Tom was filming Rock of Ages in Miami, Katie came along with Suri and they made a family holiday of it. But since then they have spent no more than a handful of nights under the same roof.

‘Katie spent her time avoiding him, and they rowed terribly,’ one Hollywood source claimed.

Now that Katie has walked away from Tom, maybe Suri will be allowed to go to a regular school, rather than being home schooled, and enjoy a proper childhood instead of being taken out on the town until midnight. And maybe her Mum, Katie, will begin to look happy once again.