This weekend, Tom Cruise is going to receive an honorary Oscar. The Academy awards these to honor those in the movie space for lifetime achievement, contributions to filmmaking, or outstanding service to the Academy itself. Several of those could apply to Cruise, who has been overlooked for a “real” Oscar far too many times. Fortunately, the Academy is going to rectify that with this award, though it doesn’t quite make up for the lack of acting awards.

Tom Cruise Will Finally Have an Oscar

Barring a huge surprise at next year’s Academy Awards, Tom Cruise is not going to win for Best Actor in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. He was pretty strong in that movie, but he didn’t put in a performance like Michael B. Jordan, Leonardo DiCaprio, Timothee Chalamet (so I hear, anyway), or Daniel Day-Lewis, necessarily. A nomination is highly unlikely, and a win is impossible.

That means he’ll go another year without being recognized for his acting, but the Academy does want to award him for what he’s done. On November 16, Cruise will be honored alongside Debbie Allen, Dolly Parton, and Wynn Thomas. In Cruise’s case (with all due respect to the others), it’s long overdue. Cruise is not just a million dollar movie star. He’s one of the best to ever do it.

It’s not like he didn’t try to win Oscar’s, and he almost did. He’s earned three nominations for acting. His roles in Jerry Maguire, Born on the Fourth of July, and Magnolia earned him recognition, but he lost out all three times. The closest, perhaps, was in 1989. Daniel Day-Lewis won the Oscar for My Left Foot, and Cruise came up short after Born on the Fourth of July. There has been some debate over whether or not Cruise was snubbed, but he likely only lost because the best actor of all time was up for the award, too.

There have been countless roles that Cruise didn’t get nominated for that he probably should’ve. Long before he was Ethan Hunt solely and an action star doing ridiculous stunts, he worked with several auteurs and put in excellent performances. Aside from Magnolia (with Paul Thomas Anderson), he also did Eyes Wide Shut with Stanley Kubrick, Minority Report with Steven Spielberg, Collateral with Michael Mann, Vanilla Sky with Cameron Crowe, and A Few Good Men with Rob Reiner.

It would not have been shocking or totally undeserving had he been nominated for an Oscar for any one of those, but there are other less “cinephile” movies that he’s done that warrant praise, too. Ethan Hunt is his most iconic role, and in a few Mission: Impossible movies, he’s really performed at a high level. If I’d had my druthers, he’d have been nominated for Fallout, which may just be the best movie of all time.

Other works probably didn’t deserve Oscar nominations but still deserve a shoutout, too:

• Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder
• Maverick in Top Gun: Maverick
• Lestat in Interview with the Vampire
• Charlie Babbitt in Rain Man
• Cage in Edge of Tomorrow

Put simply, he is one of the best actors of all time. Now that Mission: Impossible has seemingly (and sadly) run its course, he might be able to pivot back into the Oscar’s sphere. He’s got an upcoming project with Alejandro Inarritu, and that might be a return to his 1990s and early 2000s style. Either way, an Oscar will be hard to win these days when he’s not exactly gunning for one, so it’s nice that the Academy has awarded him anyway.

Conclusion

If it wasn’t obvious already, Tom Cruise is my favorite actor of all time, and it is really painful that he hasn’t won an Oscar despite being so clearly worthy of one. While an honorary Oscar isn’t remotely the same as winning Best Actor or Best Supporting Actor, it’s a step in the right direction.