Tom Cruise has a big accomplishment to celebrate!
On Sunday, November 16, the actor, 63, received an honorary Academy Award while attending the Governors Awards. The annual ceremony was hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), the governing body of the Oscars, in Hollywood.
“The cinema, it takes me around the world,” Cruise said in his acceptance speech. “It helps me to appreciate and respect differences. It shows me also our shared humanity, how alike we are in so, so many ways. And no matter where we come from, in that theater, we laugh together, we feel together, we hope together, and that is the power of this art form.”
“And that is why it matters, that is why it matters to me. So, making films is not what I do, it is who I am,” the Mission: Impossible star continued.
He added: “My love for cinema began at a very early age, as early as I can remember. I was just a little kid in a darkened theater, and I remember that beam of light just cut across the room, and I remember looking up, and it seemed to be just exploded on the screen. Suddenly, the world was so much larger than the one that I knew.”
“Entire cultures and lives and landscapes all unfolded in front of me, and it sparked something,” Cruise recalled. “It sparked a hunger for adventure, a hunger for knowledge, a hunger to understand humanity, to create characters, to tell a story, to see the world. It opened my eyes. It opened my imagination to the possibility that life could expand far beyond the boundaries that I then perceived in my own life.”
“And that beam of light opened a desire to open the world, and I have been following it ever since,” he concluded.
Cruise has been nominated for an Academy Award four times but has never won. His first nomination was for Best Actor in 1990 for Born on the Fourth of July, and his second was for the same category in 1997 for the Cameron Crowe–directed film Jerry Maguire. He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in 2000 for Magnolia and Best Picture in 2023 for Top Gun: Maverick.
Cruise was announced as a recipient of the honorary award in June.
“This year’s Governors Awards will celebrate four legendary individuals whose extraordinary careers and commitment to our filmmaking community continue to leave a lasting impact,” AMPAS President Janet Yang said at the time. Yang also noted that Cruise’s “incredible commitment to our filmmaking community, to the theatrical experience and to the stunts community [that] has inspired us all” justified his nomination.
The actor was joined by fellow recipients choreographer Debbie Allen and production designer Wynn Thomas. Dolly Parton also received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at Sunday night’s event.
Unlike the Oscars, which honor performers and industry creatives for work on a specific project, the Governors Awards consider a performer’s entire career and body of work. The first Governors Awards ceremony was held on November 14, 2009.
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