Tom Cruise’s Oscar Chances And Emmy Predictions
A column chronicling events and conversations on the awards circuit.
Although we are right in the heart of Emmy season with Phase 1 voting in progress until 10 p.m. PT Monday, it is never too early to talk Oscars, and this week brought the announcement of next season’s first big winners. The recipients of the Governors Awards were revealed Tuesday, and they included production designer Wynn Thomas, Debbie Allen, Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award recipient Dolly Parton and perhaps the biggest movie star on the planet, Tom Cruise.
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Cruise’s choice was especially interesting since he is still in the heart of his career. In fact, he’s filming a new role for Oscar magnet Alejandro G. Iñárritu on a film to be released next year and which, considering the talent involved, could certainly be a contender for the 99th annual Academy Awards. Cruise has been nominated four times, twice for Best Actor in Born on the Fourth of July (1989) and Jerry Maguire (1996), as well as his most recent acting nomination as Supporting Actor for Magnolia (1999). As a producer, he shared a Best Picture nomination for Top Gun: Maverick (2022). He is considered long overdue for Oscar recognition, but it has been 25 years since his last acting nomination, much of that time spent shooting installments of his Mission: Impossible franchise that is not exactly Oscar bait.
BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, Tom Cruise, 1989. ©Universal/courtesy Everett Collection
Someone asked me the question this week: Does Cruise finally receiving this Honorary Award reduce his odds of actually winning an Oscar in the future? Well, Peter O’Toole was voted an Honorary one in 2002 after striking out in seven Best Actor nominations, the most recent then being 1982. But even with that 20-year gap, he initially was upset and expressed his lack of enthusiasm to accept it since he thought it meant that he could “never win one.” In the end, he did show up grateful for the recognition and four years later received his eighth and final Best Actor nomination, for Venus. He lost again.
But for other actors it was a different story. In 1947, Laurence Olivier was voted an Honorary Oscar for bringing Henry V (1946) to the screen as star and producer at the same ceremony where he was also nominated for Best Actor for the film. Two years later he won Best Actor for Hamlet. Harold Russell is the only actor to win an Honorary Oscar and a competitive one in the same year, taking Best Supporting Actor in addition to the Honorary Award for the same performance in 1946’s The Best Years of Our Lives. And in a case where they could have waited just one more year, Henry Fonda, who had only a single Best Actor nomination for 1940’s The Grapes of Wrath, received an honorary gold statuette for his career in 1981. And then — who knew? — he actually won Best Actor for On Golden Pond at the very next ceremony. Same thing happened to Paul Newman, who was winless after six Best Actor nominations when voted an Honorary Oscar in 1986, only to come back the next year and finally triumph as Best Actor for The Color of Money. Newman even got two more nominations later in his career and took the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Oscar in 1994, presented by his Color of Money co-star Cruise.
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Outside of acting, others including composer Ennio Morricone and writer-director-producer Spike Lee would win Honorary Oscars and then years later win a competitive one — something 16-time perennial Best Song nominee Diane Warren is hoping will happen to her at some point following her 2023 Honorary award. So to answer the question, the Honorary Oscar that Cruise will receive on November 16 does not necessarily mean the end of his chances to, as O’Toole phrased it, actually “win one.”
‘JAWS’ TURNS 50 AND DOESN’T LOOK A DAY OLDER THAN 49
JAWS, from left: Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw, 1975
So the still-great Jaws, the movie that put Steven Spielberg on the map in 1975, turns 50 today. It opened on June 20, 1975, and changed the movie business forever in terms of how films are released and marketed, as well as becoming a cultural milestone. I was on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Friday morning to talk about the movie and what it meant to the industry and the audience. Show of hands: How many of you are still afraid to go into the water? To celebrate this milestone — and I remember exactly where I was standing in a very long line to see the film in summer of ’75 at the long-gone Plitt Century Plaza Theatre — the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is announcing today its first large-scale exhibition dedicated to a single film, and its largest exhibition ever mounted.
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The museum actually has had Jaws front and center since it opened in 2021 with the fourth and only surviving full-scale model of the shark (cheekily named Bruce after Spielberg’s lawyer at the time, Bruce Ramer) menacingly above all the tourists. At 25 feet long, it’s the largest object in the entire museum and was restored a few years ago in a seven-month project by special effects and makeup artist Greg Nicotero.
The new exhibition opens September 14 and will be on view through July 26, 2026. It features scene breakdowns, interactive experiences, behind-the-scenes stories and more than 200 original objects, many never before displayed for the public. This includes stuff from Spielberg’s personal collections and the Amblin Hearth Archive, NBCUniversal Archives & Collections and the Academy’s own collection. There also will be new merch for sale in the Museum Store including a commemorative 50th anniversary vinyl pressing of John Williams’ Oscar-winning score. The movie is one of the few Best Picture nominees to win every single one of its nominations and then lose the big one. Jaws won for Editing, Sound and Music Score but Picture to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Somehow Spielberg, who got his first DGA feature motion picture nomination for directing the movie, was bypassed by the Academy’s Directing branch for even a nomination for what in retrospect really was the directorial achievement of 1975. It was a miracle he survived all the catastrophes while trying to make that shark come alive on the shoot at Martha’s Vineyard.
EMMY NOMINATION VOTING ENDS MONDAY — HERE ARE SOME PREDICTIONS
OK, fellow Television Academy voters, it will be pencils (or actually laptops) down come Monday night at 10 p.m. PT to cast your votes in Phase 1 of the Emmy season. Nominations will be announced on July 15, so if you want to have an impact you’d better get your act together and vote. I just cast my ballot Thursday in program and writing categories, and the list is so long it took 45 minutes to finish. Sadly, I am not on the ballot for my cameo in the season premiere of Hacks (as a reporter at a press conference for Deborah Vance and her new talk show). My blink-and-you-miss-it performance wasn’t eligible time-wise for a Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series because it was too short, or at least that is what I think the rules say.
Deadline’s own Pete Hammond in ‘Hacks’ on HBO Max
The TV Academy clamped down after the great Ellen Burstyn’s 2005 Supporting Actress in a TV Movie or Mini Series nomination for her 14-second, 38-word appearance in Mrs. Harris. She obviously benefitted from name recognition and respect from her fellow actors, but 14 seconds is really tough to craft a memorable performance as I learned when I had to shout my question to Vance over the course of 15 takes. But I was really happy to be part of last year’s Best Comedy Series Emmy winner, no matter how big the role. And BTW, though no one is asking, I am also not eligible for my appearance on an episode that just dropped on another Emmy fave, FX/Hulu’s Welcome to Wrexham. The show licensed a clip from the Behind the Lens video series interview I did for Deadline last year with co-star and producer Rob McElhenney. It is pretty funny. Check it out.
Here are some thoughts on those who did make the ballot, and their chances for actual nominations in the three major categories of Comedy, Drama, and Limited Series:
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COMEDY
Image Credit: Netflix In the Comedy acting races, my Hacks co-star Jean Smart, three times a winner for the series, will do it again in Lead Actress. Ayo Edebiri, Quinta Brunson and Natasha Lyonne are likely to turn up here, and probably Nobody Wants This star Kristen Bell. If there is any room, why not Kate Hudson, so good in Running Point, or Bridget Everett in Somebody Somewhere? For Lead Actor, count on last year’s nominees Martin Short (who since has picked up a SAG Award or two for Only Murders), Jeremy Allen White and Shrinking‘s Jason Segel. It is hard to imagine The Studio’s Seth Rogen and Adam Brody aka the “hot rabbi” from Nobody Wants This not taking up the other two slots, but should someone miss out, Short’s co-star Steve Martin is of course a possibility or Emmy favorites Ted Danson of A Man on the Inside or Nathan Lane of the hilarious Mid-Century Modern, if enough voters have caught up with their first-season shows. In Supporting I would bet the farm that the late great Linda Lavin, shockingly only once before Primetime Emmy-nominated for a season of Alice, turning up as a sentimental favorite for a nomination and perhaps a first win for playing Lane’s opinionated mother in Mid-Century Modern. And for their stellar season, I would think Shrinking’s Michael Urie and Harrison Ford both find room in Supporting Actor.
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LIMITED SERIES
Image Credit: Courtesy of Netflix This category, which also includes Anthology, begins and ends with Netflix’s British juggernaut Adolescence, which is guaranteed to follow the streamer’s Baby Reindeer and Beef into the winners circle and claim a threepeat, remarkable considering the strong competition. Other nominees will be The Penguin, Dying for Sex, Disclaimer and possibly other Netflix entries like Black MIrror or Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. I actually voted for the greatly underappreciated political thriller Zero Day, also from Netflix, which is having quite a year in this category.
On the acting side, where we also throw in contenders from stand-alone TV movies, let’s anoint Renee Zellweger for the fourth Bridget Jones movie, which was a theatrical release everywhere else in the world. Weird, but she could become the first to be nominated for both an Oscar and Emmy in the same role. Also certain for Lead Actress nominations are The Penguin’s Cristin Milioti, Michelle Williams of Dying for Sex, Cate Blanchett for Disclaimer an, after appearing for 100 years in Grey’s Anatomy, is it finally time for Ellen Pompeo in Good American Family? On the Lead Actor list, Adolescence star and creator Stephen Graham is front-runner, while Colin Farrell in The Penguin, Kevin Kline in Disclaimer and Jake Gyllenhaal in Presumed Innocent are distinct possibilities if the early-season debuts don’t hurt those shows and their chances. Paul Giamatti in a Black Mirror episode, Robert De Niro in Zero Day and the Menendez bros pair of Cooper Koch and Nicholas Alexander Chavez are all possibilities. Supporting has a lot of great performances, but in the end let’s just say Owen Cooper and Erin Doherty, both of Adolescence, have this thing locked up.
More to talk about coming closer to nomination day July 15. Good luck, everyone.
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DRAMA
Image Credit: Courtesy of Max The Drama acting Lead categories are fierce, with Noah Wyle, Adam Scott, Gary Oldman, Sterling K. Brown and, despite his brief running time, Pedro Pascal looking to lock up the five slots. If there is a sixth, it belongs to Andor’s Diego Luna, voter favorite Jon Hamm in Your Friends and Neighbors, Day of the Jackal’s marvelous Eddie Redmayne or even a longshot Mark Rylance in the lesser-mentioned Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light. For Lead Actress, Kathy Bates is a certainty for the first season of Matlock. Bella Ramsey, Keri Russell, The Pitt’s Britt Lower and veteran Elisabeth Moss will take the other four slots. If there is a sixth, look for Kaitlin Olsen from High Potential to crack the code here and work off the curse of being in a broadcast network series, just like front-runner Bates, for that matter. The Supporting categories will be filled to the brim with virtually the entire cast of The White Lotus. We will see who from The Pitt, Severance and Slow Horses manages to sneak past some of them and land a nomination or two as well.
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