Tom Cruise accepted his first solo Oscar in his multi-decade acting career. During the Governors Awards on November 16 local time, the star was honored by director of one of his upcoming films, Alejandro G. Iñárritu was honored, and he came on stage to share his journey while giving an emotional acceptance speech.
Tom Cruise receives Academy Honorary Award
Speaking to a room full of visionaries and dreamers like himself, the actor began an emotional and worthy speech, reports Variety. “Cinema, it takes me around the world. It helps me appreciate and respect differences. It also shows me our shared humanity, how much we are alike in so many ways. And it doesn’t matter where we come from, in that theater, we laugh together, we feel together, we hope together, and that’s the power of this art form. And that’s why it matters, that’s why it matters to me. So Making movies isn’t what I do, it’s who I am.”
The 63-year-old actor looks back at his life in the film industry and recalls how he grew from a dreamer child to an actor and then a producer. “My love for cinema started at a very young age, as far back as I can remember,” he said. “I was just a little kid in a dark theater, and I remember a beam of light going through the room, and I remember looking up, and it seemed like it just exploded on the screen. Suddenly, the world was so much bigger than I knew. And entire cultures and lives and landscapes unfolded before me, and it awakened something.”
The experience at the movies was an eye-opening moment for the Top Gun star, who became aspiring for something bigger and better with each performance. “It sparked a hunger for adventure, a hunger for knowledge, a hunger to understand humanity, to create characters, to tell stories, 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 saw in my life then. And that ray of light sparked a desire to open up the world, and I’ve been following it ever since.”
Other honorary winners of the night included choreographer Debbie Allen, production designer Wynn Thomas and singer Dolly Parton.