Tom Cruise walked away from the 2025 Governors Awards on Sunday (November 16, 2025) night with what he’s been chasing for decades—an Academy Award. Sure, it’s an honorary one, but honestly? It might be even more meaningful than a competitive win.
The 63-year-old actor accepted his Oscar at the 16th Governors Awards ceremony, telling the crowd, “Making films is not what I do, it is who I am.” And really, who could argue with that? This is the guy who literally broke bones for his craft and refused to phone it in with green screens when he could just hang off the side of an actual airplane.
The event took place at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Ovation Hollywood, and let’s just say the star power was off the charts. Everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio to Ariana Grande showed up to witness this long-overdue moment. Meanwhile, Steven Spielberg sat front and center, visibly moved by the evening, which hits different when you remember he first met Cruise way back during the Risky Business days.
Here’s the thing about Cruise becoming an Oscar winner—he’s been nominated four times before but never quite clinched the competitive prize. Born on the Fourth of July, Jerry Maguire, Magnolia, and even producing Top Gun: Maverick all earned him nominations but no wins. So this honorary award feels like the Academy finally acknowledging what the rest of us have known forever: the man is cinema personified.
Director Alejandro González Iñárritu, who’s currently editing an upcoming Cruise film, presented the award and declared, “Tom Cruise doesn’t just make movies, he is movies.” He also dropped a tantalizing hint, suggesting this might not be Cruise’s last Oscar. Could a competitive win be on the horizon? Time will tell.
During his emotional speech, Cruise took everyone back to his childhood, sharing how he’d scrape together money for movie tickets or find creative ways to sneak into theaters when cash was tight. He reflected on cinema’s power to unite people: “No matter where we come from, in that theater, we laugh together, we feel together, we hope together, and that is the power of this art form.”
The Governors Awards also honored choreographer Debbie Allen, production designer Wynn Thomas, and philanthropist Dolly Parton, who received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award via pre-recorded video. But let’s be real—everyone stayed until the very end because they knew Cruise’s moment was being saved for last.
So there you have it. Tom Cruise, Oscar winner. It took 44 years, but he finally got his golden statue. And based on that speech and his upcoming projects, he’s nowhere near done showing us what makes cinema magical.