Tom Cruise, one of the most acclaimed actors and popular movie stars of all time, and a fierce champion of the theatrical moviegoing experience, has been tapped by the board of trustees of the American Film Institute to receive the 52nd AFI Life Achievement Award, one of the highest honors for a career in film.
Cruise will be feted at a gala celebration at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on Saturday, April 24, 2027, which will feature clips of his work, tributes from friends and collaborators and an acceptance speech by the 64-year-old himself.
“Tom Cruise is a global icon,” Kathleen Kennedy, the chair of 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. That passion has made him an extraordinary ambassador for American film around the world. It is AFI’s honor to present him with the 52nd AFI Life Achievement Award.”
Cruise, a three-time Oscar nominee and a 2025 recipient of an honorary Oscar, has, over the course of a 45-year career, starred in films that have collectively grossed nearly $13 billion worldwide. His credits include Top Gun, Jerry Maguire, Risky Business, Minority Report, A Few Good Men, Rain Man, Magnolia, The Firm, Born on the Fourth of July, The Color of Money and multiple installments of the Mission: Impossible and Top Gun series. He most recently starred in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Digger and will next be seen in Days of Thunder 2.
Cruise has previously received career-recognition honors from the Cannes Film Festival and the Producers Guild of America, as well as France’s Knight of the Legion of Honor, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Humanitarian Award and the Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation’s Pioneer Award.
The AFI is a nonprofit organization with a mandate to champion the moving image as an art form. All proceeds from the 52nd AFI life achievement award tribute gala will support AFI’s education and arts initiatives. Previous recipients of AFI’s life achievement award were:
1973: John Ford
1974: James Cagney
1975: Orson Welles
1976: William Wyler
1977: Bette Davis
1978: Henry Fonda
1979: Alfred Hitchcock
1980: James Stewart
1981: Fred Astaire
1982: Frank Capra
1983: John Huston
1984: Lillian Gish
1985: Gene Kelly
1986: Billy Wilder
1987: Barbara Stanwyck
1988: Jack Lemmon
1989: Gregory Peck
1990: David Lean
1991: Kirk Douglas
1992: Sidney Poitier
1993: Elizabeth Taylor
1994: Jack Nicholson
1995: Steven Spielberg
1996: Clint Eastwood
1997: Martin Scorsese
1998: Robert Wise
1999: Dustin Hoffman
2000: Harrison Ford
2001: Barbra Streisand
2002: Tom Hanks
2003: Robert De Niro
2004: Meryl Streep
2005: George Lucas
2006: Sean Connery
2007: Al Pacino
2008: Warren Beatty
2009: Michael Douglas
2010: Mike Nichols
2011: Morgan Freeman
2012: Shirley MacLaine
2013: Mel Brooks
2014: Jane Fonda
2015: Steve Martin
2016: John Williams
2017: Diane Keaton
2018: George Clooney
2019: Denzel Washington
2022: Julie Andrews
2024: Nicole Kidman
2025: Francis Ford Coppola
2026: Eddie Murphy