LOS ANGELES - How does a person summarise the 45-year career of American actor Tom Cruise in a four-minute speech?

“Mission impossible,” said Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu on Nov 16 as Hollywood celebrated the movie star with an honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards.

Inarritu, who directed Cruise in an untitled film set for release in October 2026, introduced his leading man and said his talent extended beyond the dangerous stunts he has become famous for.

“It is not how far he runs or how high he jumps,” Inarritu, 62, said. “It’s how precisely he decides to move, those tiny calibrations.”

Honorary Oscar statuettes were handed out to Cruise, 63, and three others selected by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

Cruise, a four-time Oscar nominee who has never won the award, was chosen for his work in films from Risky Business (1983) to two Top Gun movies (1986 and 2022) and the Mission: Impossible franchise (1996 to 2025). He also has become a prominent champion for the movie business as it faces competition from streaming and social media.

During his acceptance speech, he talked about how seeing movies in a cinema impressed him as a child.

“Suddenly the world was so much larger than the one that I knew,” he told a crowd of luminaries that included American film-maker Steven Spielberg, actor Leonardo DiCaprio and singer-actress Ariana Grande. He said he worked every job he could to earn money for movie tickets.

“I will always do everything I can to support this art form and to champion new voices, to protect what makes cinema powerful, hopefully without too many more broken bones,” he said to laughter. Cruise broke his ankle while filming a stunt for Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018) in 2017.

“Making films is not what I do. It’s who I am,” he added.

The gala also honoured American singer Dolly Par...