After almost 45 years of career and four nominations, Tom Cruise received his first Oscar on Sunday evening. The actor was awarded the honorary award during the ceremony of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Hollywood.
“How to summarize Tom Cruise’s 45-year career in a four-minute speech? Mission impossible,” said director Alejandro Iñárritu at the awards ceremony. “It’s not important how much he runs or how high he jumps,” added the director who directed the actor in a film scheduled for release in 2026, “it’s how precisely he decides to move, those tiny calibrations.”
Cruise, 63, receives this tribute for a career marked by titles such as the best gunthe saga Mission impossible, Jerry Maguire AND Eyes tightly closedamong others. In accepting the award, the actor recalled the impact going to the cinema as a child had on him. “Suddenly, the world was much bigger than the one I knew,” he said in a room where Steven Spielberg, Leonardo DiCaprio and Ariana Grande, among other major Hollywood celebrities, were present. Cruise recalled working as hard as he could to earn enough money to pay for movie tickets. “I will always do everything I can to support this art form and to promote new voices, to protect what makes cinema powerful, hopefully without many more broken bones,” he said, laughing. “Making movies is not what I do. It’s who I am,” Cruise added.
The actor had come close to receiving the statuette on four occasions, three of which as an actor and the last as a producer, as best film for Top Gun: nonconformista couple of editions ago, when he won Everything and immediately everywhere. As an artist, he closed it in 1990 with Born on the fourth of July(won by Daniel Day-Lewis formy left foot); in 1997 thanks to the charismatic Jerry Maguire (when he had it closest, but Geoffrey Rush took it from him splendor); and in 2000 as a supporting actor for Magnolia (even though Michael Caine won, Cider House Rules).
At the same gala, artist Dolly Parton received the Jean Hersholt Prize for her humanitarian work, which, among other initiatives, includes founding a library that has provided more than 300 million books to children. The singer and songwriter accepted the award for the video. This award is given “to an individual in the cinematic arts and sciences whose humanitarian efforts have honored the industry by promoting human well-being and helping to correct inequities.” The singer of Village She is a great philanthropist. Another of his best-known actions is that, in 2020, he financed the development of Moderna Laboratories’ Covid-19 vaccine, donating one million dollars through Vanderbilt University in Nashville, in his native Tennessee.
Parton was nominated in 1981 for the song From nine to five as best song for How to eliminate your bossbut there he swept Fame. In 2006, he tried again Transamericawith the song Traveling through.
Together with them, two other winners: the production designer Wynn Thomas (a frequent collaborator of director Spike Lee and who has worked on films such as Malcolm X, a wonderful mind, Cinderella’s manAND Hidden figures) and the choreographer, producer and actress Debbie Allen, creator of the choreography of numerous films and also of seven Oscar ceremonies. Neither had received a previous appointment.
