Tom Cruise reflected on the unifying power of cinema as he accepted his honorary Oscar on Sunday night.

At the 2025 Governors Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday night, filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu presented the Top Gun actor with the Academy Honorary Award.

After holding up the Oscar statuette, Tom referenced his lifelong appreciation of the film.

"The cinema it takes me around the world," he began his heartfelt speech. "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 theatre, 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."

Tom went on to recount how he was fascinated by the art of making films from an early age.

"I was just a little kid in a darkened theatre, 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," the 63-year-old continued. "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. 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."

Over the course of his career, Tom has received four nominations for Academy Awards, including for Best Actor in 1989's Born on the Fourth of July and 1996's Jerry Maguire.

Most recently, he garnered a nod as a producer for 2022's Top Gun: Maverick.

Choreographer Debbie Allen and production designer Wynn Thomas were also presented with Academy Honorary Awards during the event, while Dolly Parton was bestowed with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.