Tom Cruise receives honorary honorary Palme d’Or as Top Gun jets into Cannes

The Hollywood star gushed about his passion for cinema and he received an honorary Palme d’Or during his first visit to the festival in 30 years.

Jennifer Connelly with Tom Cruise in Cannes on Wednesday. Picture: AFP

Tom Cruise has received an honorary Palme d’Or and gushed about his passion for cinema as he made his first visit in 30 years to the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday for the launch of Top Gun: Maverick.

The French Air Force display team streaked across the sky over the red carpet as the stars headed into the screening for the long-awaited sequel to Cruise’s superstar-making 1986 blockbuster.

The movie was supposed to premiere at the French Riviera film fest back in 2020 before it was cancelled by the Covid pandemic and the film’s release delayed multiple times. Cruise was adamant it was worth waiting for cinemas to be back in full swing, and said he never considered releasing Top Gun: Maverick via a streaming platform.

“That was not going to happen, ever,” he told a Cannes audience in a talk ahead of the premiere. “I make movies for the big screen. Cinema is my love, my passion. I always go to movies when they come out. I’ll put my cap on and sit in the audience with everyone.”

Fans lined balconies and stood on roofs along the Cannes seafront to catch a glimpse of Cruise and leading lady Jennifer Connelly, while others held up signs begging for a last-minute ticket to the screening.

Earlier, the festival’s main competition got going with a movie from Russian dissident Kirill Serebrennikov, who has been forced into exile since the invasion of Ukraine.

His entry in the race for the Palme d’Or, Tchaikovsky’s Wife, is unlikely to improve his standing with the Kremlin given that it shines a light on the legendary composer’s homosexuality — a story that remains taboo for Russian conservatives. “No to war,” he said after the premiere.

The war has already been a theme at the festival, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky making a surprise video appearance at the opening ceremony on Tuesday. There will be a special screening on Thursday of Mariupolis 2, a documentary about the conflict by Lithuanian director Mantas Kvedaravicius, who was killed last month — reportedly by Russian forces.

Cruise’s 39 films as a lead actor have pulled in just shy of $US8.5bn ($12.3bn) worldwide, and Box Office Pro estimates Top Gun: Maverick could add up to $US390m in the US alone.

He received his surprise honorary Palme as he entered the theatre for Wednesday’s screening. He was last in Cannes in 1992 for the premiere of Far and Away with his then-wife Nicole Kidman, and is the only Hollywood megastar of that era to have maintained his box office power, even as he turns 60 this year.

AFP