Tom Cruise to Receive AFI Life Achievement Award, Variety Reports
Tom Cruise has been selected to receive the 52nd AFI Life Achievement Award, Variety reported — honoring a career that has made him one of Hollywood's most recognizable global stars and one of the film business's most outspoken champions of movie theatres. The award will be presented at a Hollywood ceremony in April, according to AFP.
The honour
The American Film Institute has bestowed its Life Achievement Award annually since 1973, and past recipients include Bette Davis, Elizabeth Taylor and Tom Hanks, AFP reported. Producer Kathleen Kennedy, who chairs AFI's board of trustees, said in a statement: "As an actor and producer, he brings an extraordinary commitment to everything he does. What I especially admire is his deep belief in movies and their ability to bring people together."
The non-profit AFI said Cruise was being recognized not only for his work on screen but for the way he has used his stardom to keep the theatrical experience alive through some of the industry's most difficult years.
A champion of cinemas
Cruise has been nominated for three Academy Awards for acting and received an honorary Oscar last year for his lifetime of work, AFP reported. His credits include Risky Business, Jerry Maguire, Minority Report, A Few Good Men, Rain Man and the Mission: Impossible series, whose death-defying practical stunts — including jumping from a helicopter sixteen times with a fuel-soaked, flaming parachute — earned him a Guinness World Record.
The AFI honour places him alongside the actors he grew up watching — and acknowledges a career built almost entirely on the big-screen experience.
What comes next
Cruise's latest movie, the big-budget dark comedy Digger, struggled at the box office, finishing fifth on the US and Canadian charts in its opening weekend in October, according to AFP. The Life Achievement Award ceremony in April will nonetheless celebrate a four-decade run that few Hollywood careers can match.
For the Gulf's cinemas — where the Mission: Impossible films have performed strongly with audiences across the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar — the announcement is another reminder of the star power that has kept multiplexes buzzing for decades.
Sources: Variety; AFP; ARN News Centre.