“Cinema is Who I Am” Tom Cruise’s Emotional Oscar Moment Speech

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Tom Cruise, at 63 still the biggest movie star in a room full of them, finally got to hold his own Oscar on a Hollywood stage on Sunday night.

“Making movies is not what I do, it’s who I am,” said Cruise. He was composed as always, but at moments seemed near tears as he spoke, grasping the gold honorary statuette that celebrated his more than 40 years at the apex of the industry at the film academy’s annual Governors Awards.

“In that theater we laugh together, we feel together, we hope together,” he said after a two-minute ovation.

Production designer Wynn Thomas and choreographer and actor Debbie Allen were also selected by the academy’s board of governors to be honored for their storied careers, and an absent Dolly Parton was honored for a lifetime of philanthropy at the ceremony at the Ray Dolby Ballroom in Los Angeles.

A competitive Oscar has eluded Cruise, who’s been nominated four times: as an actor for 1989’s “Born on the Fourth of July,” 1996’s “Jerry Maguire” and 1999’s “Magnolia,” and as a producer for 2022’s “Top Gun: Maverick.”

Before he took the stage, the audience saw a long montage of clips from those and his other films — loaded with death-defying stunts he often did himself — from 1981’s “Taps” through this year’s “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.”

It was fitting that the Governors Awards aren’t televised. Tom Cruise doesn’t do TV, and he’s been among the biggest champions of the theatergoing experience over streaming.

“I will always do everything I can to help this art form,” Cruise said. “To support and champion new voices, to protect what makes cinema powerful. Hopefully without too many more broken bones.”

Oscar-winning director Alejandro González Iñárritu presented Cruise the award. The two have spent several months shooting a film in London set for release in 2026. The collaboration suggests that Cruise, who has stuck to blockbuster franchise fare in recent years, might not be done trying to win an Academy Award the old-fashioned way.

“This may be his first Oscar,” Iñárritu said, “but from what I have seen and experienced, this will not be the last.”

The list of stars who attended suggests that the campaign for the next competitive Oscars is low-key underway. The banquet tables were filled with potential nominees, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael B. Jordan, Sydney Sweeney, Dwayne Johnson, Ariana Grande and Jacob Elordi.

Cruise, in typically hyper-prepared fashion, didn’t just shout out his fellow nominees from the stage, but gave each their own detailed tribute. He told Thomas the exact date and theater he first saw one of his films, Spike Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have It.” He praised Parton for showing that “compassion and creativity are not separate.” And for Allen he quoted from the work of her mother, poet and playwright Vivian Ayers Allen.

Allen gave her own tribute to Cruise, recalling the early-career signature moment when he danced and lip-synced in his underwear in “Risky Business.”

“Honey, we loved when you slid out in those tighty-whiteys,” she said.

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