Tom Cruise was honored with an Academy Honorary Award at the Governors Awards this year. The Mission Impossible actor, 63, was bestowed with the honorary accolade on November 16. Alejandro G. Iñárritu, who is directing his next project, handed him the award. Tom Cruise boasts 4 nominations across his decades-long career, including best actor for Born on the Fourth of July and Jerry Maguire, best supporting actor for Magnolia, and a best picture nomination as a producer on Top Gun: Maverick. However, he never won the award. He took to the stage to accept the honor with an emotional speech: “The cinema, it takes me around the world,” Tom Cruise said. “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 continued: "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 Cruise recounts the genesis of his love for cinema: Read more During his acceptance speech, Tom Cruise also reflected on where his love for filmmaking began: “My love for cinema began at a very early age, as early as I can remember,” he said. “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. 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.” Tom Cruise continued, “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. 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." Earlier that evening, actress Debbie Allen was also presented with an honorary award by Cynthia Erivo, as did production designer Wynn Thomas. Dolly Parton was honored with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, though she couldn't accept it herself, having previously cited health concerns. Stay tuned to SoapCentral for more.