Tom Cruise has received zero nominations at the 2023 Golden Globes Awards, which is being speculated as due to the actor formally returning his previous awards to Hollywood Foreign Press Association in 2021. According to The Hollywood Reporter, while the Tom Cruise-starring Top Gun: Maverick was nominated in the category of Best Motion Picture (Drama), the Golden Globes has surprisingly not given him the nod for his acclaimed performance in the film.
Rumor has it that the snub could be due to Tom Cruise returning his Golden Globe Awards in 2021 in a symbolic protest against the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the body which governs the awards. At the time, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association was being hotly criticized when it became widely known that the organization did not have a single Black member, despite having over 100 current members.
In the past, Tom Cruise has been given three Golden Globe Awards: one for Best Actor in 1990 for Oliver Stone’s Vietnam War protest film Born on the Fourth of July, Best Supporting Actor in 1997 for Cameron Crowe’s romantic-comedy-drama Jerry Maguire and in 2000 for Paul Thomas Anderson’s sprawling ensemble drama Magnolia. Tom Cruise has also been nominated for a Golden Globe four other times, for Risky Business, A Few Good Men, The Last Samurai, and Tropic Thunder.
Whether or not Tom Cruise achieves a fourth Golden Globe for his performance as naval aviator Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, Top Gun: Maverick has unquestionably been successful on a nearly unprecedented scale. It is the highest-grossing film of Tom Cruise’s entire, massively profitable career, the single highest-grossing movie of 2022, and has already been nominated for numerous awards (in addition to those it has already won). Tom Cruise could go without a personal Golden Globe Award on this one and still come out looking pretty good.
On the other hand, Tom Cruise has been one of the biggest movie stars in the world for decades now and it is not nothing for a major award ceremony to not acknowledge him for triumphantly returning to one of the most iconic roles in his long career. It is very likely that even if Tom Cruise is not getting a Golden Globe nomination for Top Gun: Maverick, he might well get an Academy Award nomination.
Tom Cruise’s Golden Globe snub is not the only interesting wrinkle in the nominations (or lack of them) this year. Brendan Fraser has been nominated for Best Actor (Drama) for his lead role in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale, but he has already stated that he will not participate in the ceremony. In 2018, Fraser alleged that he had been sexually assaulted by former Hollywood Foreign Press Association head Phillip Berk in 2003, contributing to a years-long depression that affected both his career and personal life. Berk has denied the allegations and said that he was “joking,” but, as Fraser recently told GQ in a career-spanning interview: “I have more history with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association than I have respect for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.”
