Tom Cruise receives first Oscar after four decades of hardwork

Tom Cruise received his first honorary Oscar at the 2025 Governors Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday night.

The accolade was presented by filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu to the Top Gun actor with the Academy Honorary Award.

Over the course of Tom’s career, He has received four nominations for Academy Awards, including for Best Actor in 1989's Born on the Fourth of July and 1996's Jerry Maguire.

The 63-year-old, raised his lifetime achievement high and recounted his lasting praise for the film, "The cinema it takes me around the world."

He began his heartfelt speech, "It helps me to appreciate and respect differences. It shows me also our shared humanity, how alike we are in so, so many ways. And no matter where we come from, in that theatre, we laugh together, we feel together, we hope together, and that is the power of this art form. And that is why it matters, that is why it matters to me. So, making films is not what I do, it is who I am."

Tom went on to recall how the craft of making films always captivated him from an early age.

"I was just a little kid in a darkened theatre, and I remember that beam of light just cut across the room, and I remember looking up, and it seemed to be just exploded on the screen," he continued.

"Suddenly, the world was so much larger than the one that I knew. And entire cultures and lives and landscapes all unfolded in front of me, and it sparked something. It sparked a hunger for adventure, a hunger for knowledge, a hunger to understand humanity, to create characters, to tell a story, to see the world. It opened my eyes."

Notably, Debbie Allen and Wynn Thomas were presented with Academy Honorary Awards. Meanwhile, Dolly Parton received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.