Tom Cruise, Dolly Parton, Debbie Allen and Wynn Thomas will receive prizes from the Honorific Academy to Governors 2025, announced on Tuesday the Academy of Arts and Sciences of the Academy of Films and Sciences.
Cruise, Allen and Thomas will receive features from the Academy, while Parton will receive the humanitarian prize Jean Hersholt.
The prices were voted by the board of directors of the Academy, which chooses up to four recipients from the Governors’ Prize each year. In a statement announcing this year’s choices, the president of the academy, Janet Yang, said: “Debbie Allen is a pioneering choreographer and actor, whose work has captured generations and crossed genres. Tom Cruise’s incredible commitment to our film community an unshakable dedication to charity.
Allen is a choreographer, actress, director and producer whose films include “The Six Triple Eight”, “Fame”, “Ragtime” and “Jo Jo Dancer, your life calls”. She also choreographed the dance routines on the Oscars 10 times, mainly in the 1990s for producer Gil Cates.
Cruise is one of the biggest Hollywood cinema stars, but he has only been nominated for three interim Oscars, none of them in the past 24 years. He was nominated for the best actor for “Born on July 4” in 1990 and “Jerry Maguire” in 1997 and for the best support actor for “Magnolia” in 2000. In recent years, he focused on action films like the series “Mission: Impossible”. He was nominated for the best film as one of the producers of the 2023 candidate “Top Gun: Maverick”.
Parton is an icon of country music whose work in the film includes “9 to 5”, “Steel Magnolias” and “The Best Little Whorehouse of Texas”. His philanthropic work includes the Dollywood Foundation and the Dolly Parton imagination library, aimed at helping to educate children in east of Tennessee.
Thomas is a production designer whose films include “She’s Gotta Have It”, “Do the Good Thing”, “Malcolm X”, “A Beautiful Mind” and “Hidden Figures”. He is also a long -standing governor of the Academy, although he is not currently on the board of directors. (The members of the board of directors are not eligible for governors.) Thomas is only the second production designer or artistic director to receive the prize, after Robert F. Boyle in 2007.
Honorary recipients are chosen each year at the last meeting of the current governors’ council. A new board of directors (largely but not completely made up of existing members) will be announced shortly.
The 16th prize for annual governors will take place on November 16 at Ray Dolby Balloom at Ovation Hollywood.
