Last night was the 2025 Governors Awards, and one of the people who received an incredible honor was Tom Cruise. The 63-year-old received an Academy Honorary Award, marking the first Oscar for the actor who had previously been nominated 4 times. The American Made star brought the charisma to the evening and appeared to be having the time of his life with other A-list attendees.
He let loose on the dance floor, dancing with Debbie Allen, who also received the same honorary award. In a viral video posted by artist Brandon O'Neal, Cruise dropped it low, showing off his dance moves.
In photos provided by the Academy, at the reception, he was shmoozing it up with stars like Ariana Grande. They shared a sweet hug after having what looked like a lovely conversation.
He was also spotted talking to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Emily Blunt.
Another viral video showed Cruise having a conversation with Sydney Sweeney. They both had huge smiles on their face as they talked about driving boats.
Cruise was presented the award by Mexican filmmaker
The Revenant, which starred Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson, and Will Poulter, received twelve nominations at the 88th Academy Awards. It won four, including Best Picture, Best Director (Iñárritu), Best Cinematography (Emmanuel Lubezki), and Best Actor (DiCaprio).
Cruise has previously been nominated for Best Actor for Born on the Fourth of July (1989) and Jerry Maguire (1996), Best Supporting Actor for Magnolia (1999), and Best Picture as a producer on Top Gun: Maverick (2022).
There's no denying Cruise is one of the biggest movie stars, with a love of cinema and a goal to bring people back into the movie theaters. He talked about the power of cinema while on stage, saying, “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."
He explained that his love for cinema began as early as he 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 exploding on the screen. 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," he continued, "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.”