Tom Cruise accepted his first-ever solo Oscar award spanning his multi-decade acting career. During the Governors Awards on November 16 local time, the star was awarded by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, the director of one of his upcoming flicks, and he took to the stage to share his journey, giving an emotional acceptance speech.
Tom Cruise takes home the Academy Honorary Award
Speaking to a room full of visionaries and dreamers like himself, the actor began an emotional and deserved speech as reported by Variety. “The 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, 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 63-year-old also walked down memory lane with his life in the film industry, how he went from a dreaming kid to an actor and then as a producer. “My love for cinema began at a very early age, as early as I can remember,” he said. “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. 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.”
Experiencing films was an eye-opening moment for the Top Gun star, who became needy for something bigger and better with each performance of his. “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 to open the world, and I have been following it ever since.”
Other honorary winners of the night included choreographer Debbie Allen, production designer Wynn Thomas, and singer Dolly Parton.
