Shields revealed the news during an interview on the Tonight show on Friday night.

The 41-year old 'Suddenly Susan' actress told Jay Leno, the show's host, that Cruise had visited her on Thursday.

She said: "He came over to my house and gave me a heartfelt apology. 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."

Cruise's representative, Arnold Robinson, said in a statement: "It is true that his friendship with Ms Shields has been mended. He has not changed his position about antidepressants.

Last summer, Cruise told Matt Lauer on 'The Today Show' that he did not
think Shields should have used anti-depressant drugs to treat her post-natal
depression after the birth of her first child.

Cruise, who is a Scientologist and therefore opposed to the use of drugs for treating mental health issues, also slammed psychiatric medicine as a "pseudo science".

Shields, who wrote Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression, last year dismissed the actor's remarks as a "ridiculous rant" and "a disservice to mothers everywhere".

"I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Mr Cruise has never suffered from postpartum depression," she wrote in an op-ed piece in The New York Times last year.

In accordance with his Scientology beliefs, Cruise - whose fiancée Katie
Holmes gave birth to the couple's first child, daughter Suri, this year -
insisted that depression could be treated with vitamins and exercise.