Tom Cruise has finally been awarded an Oscar, with the star picking up an Honorary statuette for his career.
The film icon has previously been nominated for three competitive acting Academy Awards for his roles in Born On The Fourth Of July, Jerry Maguire and Magnolia, as well as a producing nod for Top Gun: Maverick, though has never won.
Cruise picked up an Academy Honorary Award over the weekend at the Governors Awards, with director Alejandro G. Iñárritu presenting the gong to the actor.
In his speech, Cruise reflected on his lifelong love for cinema, while also paying tribute to the many people who had shaped his career.
Recalling that his love for cinema began at a “very early age”, he shared: “I was just a little kid in a darkened theater, 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.
“And suddenly, the world was so much larger than the one that I knew. 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. It opened my imagination to the possibility that life could expand far beyond the boundaries that I then perceived in my own life. And that beam of light opened a desire in me to open the world to me, and I have been following it ever since.”
Cruise continued: “Cinema, it takes me around the world. 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 theater, we laugh together, we feel together, we hope together, we dream 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.”
The star went on to say that cinema is “built by communities” as he praised the many colleagues he has worked with over the decades “who have built worlds from your imagination”, as well as cinema workers and audiences.
At the end of his speech, Cruise got those in attendance who he has worked with across his career to stand up, adding: “Please know that I carry you with me, each of you, and you are part of every frame of every film I have ever made or will make.
“I want you to know I will always do everything I can to help this art form. To support and champion new voices, to protect what makes cinema powerful, and hopefully without too many more broken bones, that would be nice!
“I promise to do what I can to maybe inspire that next kid who might working their ass off now to but that admission or figure out some damn way to get into that theater,” he concluded.
It comes after it was recently reported that Cruise had declined a Kennedy Centre Honour from Donald Trump, apparently due to “scheduling conflicts”.
Meanwhile Colin Farrell recently recalled an awkward day on set with Cruise while working on Minority Report at the height of his own addiction issues.