Film Academy’s Governors Awards: 100 People, Collaborators or Organizations Worthy of Honorary, Thalberg or Hersholt Awards

Honorary Award or Thalberg Award

Increasingly described as “the last movie star,” Cruise is worthy of that moniker given that he has been a consistent box office draw longer than anyone else in history. Check the numbers — he has even outlasted John Wayne.

Cruise’s popularity — built on the back of his all-American, boy-next-door smile and swagger, as well as real acting chops and tireless boosterism of his own projects — has spanned 1983’s Risky Business through 2025’s Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, a period of 42 years, with two chart-topping Top Gun movies, 36 years apart, inbetween, the latter of which, in the view of no less an authority than Steven Spielberg, “saved Hollywood’s ass” in the wake of the global pandemic.

Cruise spent the first half of his career working mostly in filmmaker-driven projects. He worked with Barry Levinson (1988’s Rain Man, which won the best picture Oscar), Francis Ford Coppola (1983’s The Outsiders), Martin Scorsese (1986’s The Color of Money), Oliver Stone (1989’s Born on the Fourth of July, for which he received his first acting Oscar nom), Rob Reiner (1992’s A Few Good Men), Sydney Pollack (1993’s The Firm), Cameron Crowe (1996’s Jerry Maguire, Oscar nom #2, and 2001’s Vanilla Sky), Stanley Kubrick (1999’s Eyes Wide Shut), Paul Thomas Anderson (1999’s Magnolia, Oscar nom #3), Spielberg (2002’s Minority Report) and Michael Mann (2004’s Collateral).

He has spent the second half working mostly in action-oriented flicks of widely-varying quality, but fairly unwavering popularity, in which he famously does many of his own stunts. Among them: eight Mission: Impossible films (1996, 2000, 2006, 2011, 2015, 2018, 2023 and 2025), the first of which also marked his initial producing credit (he has also produced every subsequent installment), plus The Last Samurai (2003), The War of the Worlds (2005), Jack Reacher (2012, also producer), Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016, also producer) and Top Gun: Maverick (also producer).

With very few exceptions, most notably 2008’s Tropic Thunder, Cruise has, over the last 20 years, consistently played a version of Cruise, or at least his well-established screen persona, which audiences still love. Unlike many other A-listers, you won’t see him playing a superhero in a comic book adaptation — he turned down Tony Stark — because he, not the character he plays, is the star; and you won’t see him on a streaming service or on TV, because he is a movie star, which is why he also ferociously defends the theatrical experience.

Though Cruise is tremendously popular among those with whom he has collaborated, he certainly has some personal beliefs that many find objectionable, so don’t give him the Hersholt. But his massive professional achievement and impact is inarguable, which is why it has already been acknowledged by the Critics Choice Awards (2005), BAFTA-LA Britannia Awards (2005), CinemaCon (2018), Cannes Film Festival (2022) and Producers Guild (2023).

Branch(es) It Would Most Please Actors, Producers and Production/Technology
Precedents Honorary: Charlie Chaplin (1927/1928 and 1971), Douglas Fairbanks (1939), Gary Cooper (1960), Cary Grant (1969), Mary Pickford (1975), Paul Newman (1985), Robert Redford (2001), Jackie Chan (2016) and Samuel L. Jackson (2021); Thalberg: Clint Eastwood (1994) and Warren Beatty (1999)
Potential Tablemates Christopher McQuarrie, Steven Spielberg, Barry Levinson, Renée Zellweger, Cameron Crowe, Oliver Stone, Paul Thomas Anderson, Jerry Bruckheimer, Dakota Fanning and Glen Powell