Tom Cruise’s first Oscar: an honorary award after four nominations

After more than 40 years in film and four previous Academy Award nominations, Tom Cruise has finally walked away with an Oscar – an Academy Honorary Award presented at the 2025 Governors Awards in Los Angeles.

The 63-year-old Mission: Impossible star accepted the statuette on 16 November 2025 at the 16th Governors Awards, held at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Ovation Hollywood.

For Cruise, it is technically his first Oscar, despite previous nominations for:

• Best Actor – Born on the Fourth of July (1990)

• Best Actor – Jerry Maguire (1997)

• Best Supporting Actor – Magnolia (2000)

• Best Picture (producer) – Top Gun: Maverick (2023)

The honorary prize is voted on by the Academy’s Board of Governors and recognises lifetime achievement and service to cinema, rather than a single performance.

Inside the 2025 Governors Awards: who honoured him, and who shared the night

Cruise’s Honorary Oscar was handed to him by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, the Oscar-winning director currently working with him on an as-yet-untitled film due in 2026.

He was one of several honourees at the ceremony. The Academy also recognised:

• Dolly Parton – receiving the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award

• Debbie Allen – choreographer, director and producer, given an honorary Oscar

• Wynn Thomas – acclaimed production designer, also awarded an honorary Oscar

The room was packed with awards-season talent; Variety notes that the Governors Awards red carpet drew actors like Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio, Dwayne Johnson, Sydney Sweeney and Emma Stone, all keen to be seen early in the Oscar race.

In that context, Cruise’s moment wasn’t just nostalgic. It was a reminder to the industry – and to audiences – of how central he has been to the cinema business that all of those other films depend on.

“Making films is not what I do, it is who I am” – the speech

On stage, Cruise used his speech to talk less about himself as a star and more about cinema as a shared experience.

According to Variety and People’s transcripts, he described how film has taken him around the world, helped him respect differences and shown him “our shared humanity” – people laughing, feeling and hoping together in the same dark room.

He then delivered the line that BBC and several outlets picked up as the headline:

that making films is “not what I do, it is who I am.” 

Cruise also looked back to his childhood, remembering being a young boy in a cinema, watching a beam of light from the projector hit the screen and open up other lives, landscapes and cultures. He said that early experience sparked a hunger for adventure, knowledge and understanding people, and that he has been “following that beam of light ever since.”

It was an unusually vulnerable moment from someone whose public persona is often defined by control, precision and physical bravery.

A career the Academy has recognised, but never crowned – until now

Part of why this Honorary Oscar landed so strongly is the long, slightly strange history between Tom Cruise and the Academy.

As the Telegraph and People recap, he has been nominated four times but never won a competitive statuette:

• 1989 – Born on the Fourth of July: Cruise played Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic, in a role that demanded both physical and emotional intensity. He lost to Daniel Day-Lewis (My Left Foot).

• 1996 – Jerry Maguire: His charismatic sports agent earned him another Best Actor nomination – but again, no win.

• 1999 – Magnolia: Nominated for Best Supporting Actor as motivational speaker Frank T.J. Mackey.

• 2022 – Top Gun: Maverick: Credited as a producer, Cruise was part of the Best Picture nomination for the film many insiders credit with reigniting post-pandemic cinema.

Directors and industry figures have repeatedly singled him out as a defender of theatrical releases. Steven Spielberg, for example, was widely quoted in 2023 telling Cruise he had “saved” cinema by insisting that Top Gun: Maverick open in cinemas rather than heading straight to streaming.

The Academy’s Board of Governors cited that same commitment in their rationale, praising his “unwavering” support for theatrical exhibition, his influence on stunt work and his “unmatched body of work”.

Tom Cruise, stunts and the physical side of “who I am”

Any portrait of Cruise’s career has to mention the stunts.

He has spent almost three decades hanging off planes, climbing skyscrapers and riding motorbikes off cliffs in the Mission: Impossible series and beyond – famously insisting on doing the vast majority of those sequences himself.

In 2017 he broke his ankle jumping between buildings while filming Mission: Impossible – Fallout in London, then returned to finish the sequence once healed.

In interviews collected by People, Cruise has explained that he believes audiences can feel the authenticity when a performer really does the thing – when the danger, effort and skill are real. He sees that as part of his responsibility to cinema: learning new skills, pushing his limits, and putting that on screen for viewers who’ve bought a ticket.

Seen in that light, the “who I am” line isn’t just poetic. It matches how he works.

Why this honorary Oscar matters – for Cruise and for cinema

For some actors, an honorary Oscar late in their career can feel like a consolation prize. In Cruise’s case, it lands differently.

• It acknowledges his role as a guardian of the big-screen experience at a time when streaming, changing habits and post-pandemic uncertainty still hang over cinemas.

• It recognises not just one performance, but a pattern: large-scale, often risky films designed to be watched in cinemas, with clear, audience-first storytelling.

• And it gives the Academy a way to say “thank you” for the parts of his career that don’t always fit neatly into awards categories – from franchise stunts to behind-the-scenes advocacy for theatrical releases.

From a fan’s perspective, the moment is disarmingly simple: Tom Cruise, in a tux, finally holding an Oscar after decades of blockbusters, telling a roomful of peers and technicians that storytelling is the core of his identity, not just his job.

And for an industry still trying to persuade people to leave the sofa and go back to the cinema, having one of its most recognisable faces say that the theatre is where we “laugh together, feel together, hope together” is a powerful piece of messaging in itself.