Cinema transports me across the globe and fosters understanding and respect for differences while revealing our shared humanity, Cruise reflected upon receiving his first Academy Award.
On November 17 (KST), Cruise was honored with the Academy Honorary Award at the sixteenth Governors Awards held in the Ray Dolby Ballroom in Hollywood, marking his first Oscar in a forty-four-year career that began in 1981. Although he earned his first Academy Award nomination for Born on the Fourth of July in 1990 and received additional nominations afterward, the statuette had remained out of reach until now.
The Academy Honorary Award, presented by the Academy’s Board of Governors, recognizes individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to cinema or achieved exceptional lifetime accomplishments, and Cruise’s win arrives thirty-five years after his first nomination. In his acceptance speech, he emphasized that regardless of origin, audiences share laughter, emotion, and hope in theaters, describing cinema as the reason movies matter and explaining that filmmaking is not simply work but his essence.
Director Alejandro González Iñárritu, known for The Revenant, presented the award, praising Cruise’s legacy and noting that while this is his first Oscar, it will not be his last, hinting at the possibility of another Academy Award with their upcoming film scheduled for release next year.
The Associated Press reported that when Iñárritu announced Cruise’s name, the audience of industry professionals rose for a two-minute standing ovation, and Cruise, visibly moved, took the stage to recall his earliest and most powerful memory of cinema.
He said his passion for film began when he was a child sitting in a dark theater watching a beam of light sweep across the room and burst onto the screen, a moment that made him realize the world was far larger than he had imagined.
He explained that the diverse cultures, lives, and landscapes he saw on screen sparked something within him, driving a lifelong hunger for adventure, learning, and storytelling, along with a desire to understand humanity and explore the world.
Cruise’s Honorary Oscar is especially significant given his long history of near misses at the Academy Awards despite decades of global acclaim. After Born on the Fourth of July, he earned Best Actor recognition for Jerry Maguire in 1997 and Best Supporting Actor recognition for Magnolia in 2000, yet a win continued to elude him, and in 2023 Top Gun: Maverick competed for Best Picture without securing the award.
In June, the Academy praised Cruise as one of the most famous and highest-grossing actors of all time, highlighting his dedication to filmmaking, his dramatic performances, his stuntwork, his efforts in helping the film industry navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, and his commitment to performing his own stunts.
