Tom Cruise outshines Oscars rivals as Academy readies for award show

Los Angeles – Tom Cruise lived up to his billing as the “last true movie star” as nearly 200 of 2023’s Oscar nominees gathered to celebrate, and size up their competition, at the Academy’s boozy annual luncheon on Monday.

In a room packed with A-listers, such as director Steven Spielberg and actress Cate Blanchett, there was no doubt Cruise remained the biggest draw, with a crowd of well-wishers from Hollywood moguls to Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai lining up to greet him throughout the event.

Cruise, 60, is nominated this year as a producer of Top Gun: Maverick, in which he also starred. The film is considered a growing front runner for the Best Picture Oscar – Hollywood’s most prestigious prize.

“It’s been incredible,” said Cruise.

“I just want to get people into theatres. But this is lovely,” he said, motioning to the Beverly Hills ballroom, packed with Oscar nominees and Academy voters, and kitted out with giant golden statuettes and open champagne bars.

The 95th Academy Awards will be held on March 12.

Academy voters in 2023 handed out various nominations for box-office smash hits such as Top Gun: Maverick, Avatar: The Way Of Water and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever – raising hopes that Oscars TV audiences will pick up.

“The awards gods have smiled on us – there’s nothing we can do about that,” joked film producer Glenn Weiss, who is returning to produce the upcoming Oscars telecast ceremony.

During her luncheon speech, Academy president Janet Yang reiterated her wish to leave behind the “unprecedented” controversy of 2022, when actor Will Smith infamously slapped comedian Chris Rock live on the Oscars stage before being banned.

“What happened on stage was totally unacceptable. And the response from our organisation was inadequate,” she said.

Smith was allowed to remain at the Oscars and accept his Best Actor prize after striking Rock, and was only later banned from attending the Academy Awards for a decade.

The Academy must act compassionately and decisively in times of crisis, said Yang.

After lunch, the names of all 182 attending nominees, plus directors representing their countries in the international feature film category, were read out, and the nominees posed for the traditional giant “class photo”.

Everything Everywhere All At Once, a quirky science-fiction flick which is many pundits’ tip for Best Picture winner, earned the most nominations in 2023 with 11. Its predominantly Asian cast received many of the loudest cheers on Monday.

“We paid them a lot of money to do that,” joked Best Actress nominee Michelle Yeoh, describing the indie film’s giant success as “a dream come true”.

Colin Farrell and Austin Butler, Best Actor nominees and stars of Best Picture rivals The Banshees Of Inisherin and Elvis, also drew raucous cheers.

Notable by her absence Monday was Andrea Riseborough, who controversially earned a coveted Best Actress nomination after an intense, last-minute social media campaign mounted by prominent celebrities.

But among the nominees present was novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, nominated for writing the screenplay of British drama Living, some five years after he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in Stockholm.

“This is very different,” he said. “This is like some version of the American dream. So many people dream about being here.”

He described the Oscars as like an election with “a lot more campaigning” than for other famous awards.

His fellow Nobel Prize winner, Pakistani activist Yousafzai, attended as an executive producer of Stranger At The Gate, a short documentary about a United States Marine veteran who plotted to blow up a mosque in his hometown.

“It’s surreal,” she told AFP after meeting Cruise. “I’ve seen him on the screen and now I’m seeing him in person.” AFP