Hollywood actor Tom Cruise not only battles creatures from outer space in his latest film War of the Worlds, he also believes aliens really exist, he told a German newspaper on Wednesday.

Asked in an interview with the tabloid daily Bild if he believed in aliens, Cruise said: "Yes, of course. Are you really so arrogant as to believe we are alone in this universe?"

"Millions of stars, and we're supposed to be the only living creatures? No, there are many things out there, we just don't know," Cruise, 42, said in the interview published in German.

Cruise's film War of the Worlds is based on British writer H.G. Wells' 1898 story of the invasion of Earth by Martians.