Tom Cruise receives honorary Oscar at Governors Awards: ‘Making movies is not what I do, it’s who I am’

“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 Tom 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 Tom 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.

Here’s a look at Sunday night’s other honorees:

Debbie Allen

Debbie Allen, 75, has never been nominated for an Oscar. But the multi-hyphenate entertainer has played an integral role in the Oscars show, having choreographed seven ceremonies over the years, four of them nominated for Emmys.

As an actor she appeared in Ragtime and both the film and television series Fame. She was also a producer of the film Amistad, whose director, Steven Spielberg, hugged her as she took the stage.

A tearful Allen thanked the room for “this glorious golden moment in the sun.”

Cynthia Erivo presented the award to Allen, whom she considers an “aunty,” and praised her for lifting up her fellow Black artistes.

“Debbie, you have not only shown us the great heights dedication to the arts can take us, you have fought to bring all of us along with you,” Erivo said.

Allen thanked her sister, actor Phylicia Rashad, and her husband of 40 years, former NBA all-star and LA Laker Norm Nixon, both of whom sat at her table.

Looking at her statuette, she said it feels like she and Oscar “got married. Sorry, Norman!”

Wynn Thomas

Wynn Thomas was honored for the decades of visual imagination he brought to films as one of the first Black production designers and art directors of Hollywood films.

His movies have included director Ron Howard’s best-picture winner A Beautiful Mind and director Tim Burton’s sci-fi farce Mars Attacks.

But he’s best known for his decades of collaborations with director Spike Lee on films including Do The Right Thing, Malcolm X and Da 5 Bloods.

“My journey to storytelling began as a poor Black kid in one of the worst slums in Philadelphia,” Thomas said after accepting his statuette from Octavia Spencer. “The local gangs looked down on me and called me sissy. But that sissy grew up to work with some great filmmakers.”

Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton was the recipient of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her decades-long charitable work in literacy and education.

The country music giant had to miss the show, her representatives said, because of a long-established scheduling conflict, and not health difficulties that prompted her to cancel several recent concerts.

Parton has twice been nominated for best original song Oscars, including for 9 to 5, the title song of her first film in an acting career that also included Steel Magnolias.

Her 9 to 5 co-star Lily Tomlin presented the award, turning her struggles to read the teleprompter into comic improv. She fondly recalled the baby-doll pajamas Parton wore at the impromptu slumber parties they had with co-star Jane Fonda.

Tomlin said the song “9 to 5” became “an anthem for our times” and was itself an example of Parton’s philanthropy with its emphasis on worker struggles.

She said it’s ironic that there is so much artifice in Parton’s appearance, because “she is the most authentic person I have ever known.”

Tom Cruise praises his fellow winners

Tom 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 Wynn Thomas the exact date and theater he first saw one of his films, Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It. He praised Dolly Parton for showing that “compassion and creativity are not separate.” And for Debbie 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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