5 Movies Tom Cruise Should Have Won an Oscar For

The movie is not out yet, and at the time of writing, the 2026 Oscar Race has not really begun. It won’t end until 2027, either, because that’s when the award show celebrating the movies of 2026 will be held. Anyway, the movie just alluded to is Digger, which feels like a movie Tom Cruise is using to finally win an Oscar. He’s been very committed to numerous rules for about 40 years now, having been a genuine movie star in just about all that time. There are things about him not related to his film work that suggest it’s not all been smooth-sailing, but if you want to stick to the acting, it’s been a pretty phenomenal career so far.

Given how many good movies he’s been in, and how good he’s been in so many of them, it feels a bit surprising that Tom Cruise does not yet have a competitive Academy Award. Digger might be the one to do it (and hey, working with Alejandro G. Iñárritu worked for Leonardo DiCaprio, who finally won his Oscar thanks to his role in The Revenant), but there are arguments to be made that it should’ve happened for Cruise earlier. These are five particularly strong performances from the past that he should’ve – or at least comfortably could’ve – won Academy Awards for playing.

5

‘Born on the Fourth of July’ (1989)

Image via Universal Pictures

The easiest movie to put here is Born on the Fourth of July, because this was kind of Oscar bait. Oscar bait is not automatically a bad thing, and Born on the Fourth of July is potentially the good kind of Oscar bait. It’s a movie about a man who becomes an anti-war activist after being paralyzed during his time in combat in the Vietnam War. He was a real-life man named Ron Kovic, and his memoir was what the movie was based on. And then, yes, Tom Cruise is the one who plays Kovic, and he certainly dives right in trying to capture all the big and challenging emotions that would come with experiencing one’s life being changed in such an impactful way.

An honorable mention is probably worth giving to Rain Man. Tom Cruise was very good in that film, and it was another movie that was clearly going for Academy Award success, doing so by winning Best Picture, and then Dustin Hoffman won Best Actor. Rain Man and Born on the Fourth of July being released close together did a lot to emphasize Cruise’s skills as a true dramatic actor, rather than “just” someone who could do comedies or action movies. And Born on the Fourth of July did give him his first Oscar nomination, so it’s easy to highlight it as the first time he maybe should’ve won an Oscar… that year, though, Best Actor went to Daniel Day-Lewis for My Left Foot (not an entirely dissimilar sort of performance, in terms of what was asked for) instead.

4

‘Eyes Wide Shut’ (1999)

Image via Warner Bros.

At the dawn of the 21st century, Tom Cruise starred in what ended up being the final Stanley Kubrick movie, and it was kind of a psychological thriller by the name of Eyes Wide Shut. Emphasis on “kind of” because this is not an easy movie to break down and define genre-wise. Some people call it an erotic thriller, but it’s probably more of an anti-erotic film, honestly. It’s about lust and infidelity, to some extent, but more focused on insecurity, and what happens when one man drives himself mad after the revelation that his wife thought about cheating on him. On that front, it’s almost a dark comedy, just because of the intensity of his downward spiral, but then it’s got more of an emphasis on dark thrillers and drama than something like After Hours, which is another movie about a man’s wild and increasingly surreal nighttime odyssey in New York City.

Tom Cruise does have to have a certain level of charm here, playing a well-off doctor who still isn’t quite an elite, and as his journey gets him uncomfortably immersed within the lifestyles of some actual elites (many of them remaining shrouded in mystery), Cruise also has to showcase a great deal of vulnerability and insecurity. It’s one of the most ego-free performances Tom Cruise has ever given, and one gets the sense he was just 100% down for whatever Kubrick wanted to do in challenging him. Of course, the likes of Nicole Kidman and Sydney Pollack also impress during the scenes they’re given, but Tom Cruise is really at the center of this one, and the strength of his performance is a big reason why Eyes Wide Shut ultimately has the (sometimes mortifying) impact it does.

3

‘Tropic Thunder’ (2008)

Image via Paramount Pictures

Those who enjoy the act of raining on a parade might like to jump in right now and say something along the lines of, “Oh, all the make-up/prosthetics did the work for Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder,” and yeah, that did some of the work, but there was more to Cruise’s transformation than just that. Tom Cruise could’ve looked the way he usually did, without being physically larger and having his usual hair, and it would still have felt like a truly transformative performance. He’d gone big with Born on the Fourth of July, and there’s another 1999 movie that’ll be mentioned in a bit where he got to chew on some loud material, but in Tropic Thunder, as Les Grossman, he gets to be aggressive and bombastic but in a comedic rather than dramatic way.

Sure, Les doesn’t think he’s in a comedy, and he might ordinarily be a terrifying character if Tropic Thunder were a more serious look at the film industry, but within this particular movie, and alongside a bunch of other comedic performances (there are so many notable people in Tropic Thunder), Cruise emerges as hilarious. He really does steal the relatively few scenes he appears in, in Tropic Thunder, and it’s the kind of thing that felt like it could’ve gotten a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the Oscars, were it not for Robert Downey Jr. earning that nomination for his role in the same movie. Not that two nominees can’t come from the same film, but it’s rare. Anyway, both actors transformed and went all-out for these particular roles, and Tom Cruise’s sheer intensity and ridiculousness in Tropic Thunder really does have to be seen to be believed.

2

‘Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)

If a brief rant can be given, why is it that action movie performances don’t get held to the same regard as more drama-focused performances? Like, great action stars are asked to do a lot on screen, and even if they’re not literally doing 100% of their stunts the whole time, there is still so much to be said about how physically demanding it would be to continually holding yourself in such a way where you seem powerful and cool, but not like you’re trying too hard. There is just this knack that some actors have for being very convincing in action movies, and Tom Cruise is one of them, with him demonstrating this the best in his Mission: Impossible films.

He’s good in all of them, and is even pretty good in the ones that overall aren’t the best, but Mission: Impossible – Fallout is a real highlight of the series, owing to how well it’s paced, how high-quality all its action is, and how locked in Cruise and his co-stars are throughout all 150-ish minutes of its high-stakes/relentless runtime. Mission: Impossible – Fallout would still be good with an okay performance at its center, but here, even more so than usual, Cruise treats playing the character of Ethan Hunt with the same gravitas and commitment that most Shakespearean actors would have if they were playing Macbeth on stage. So, why not consider such a performance Oscar-worthy? It really is, or at least it really should be.

1

‘Magnolia’ (1999)

Image via New Line Cinema

With Eyes Wide Shut, it’s like, okay, Tom Cruise wasn’t nominated. So there’s a bit more of a leap involved in saying, “Actually, he should’ve won.” With Born on the Fourth of July, he was nominated, but his main competitor was Daniel Day-Lewis, and that’s always going to be difficult to go up against someone like him. Tropic Thunder and Mission: Impossible – Fallout… sure, they weren’t really dramas, or the kinds of movies that tend to get a lot of love from the Academy Awards. Enter Magnolia, though, and this really is the one that should’ve won Cruise an Oscar. He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and is incredible as one part of a huge ensemble cast, playing an intense motivational speaker/pickup artist named Frank T.J. Mackey.

Like all the main characters in Magnolia, Frank struggles with various human things, and Cruise brings it during the scenes when he’s supposed to be dominant and aggressive, and then also shines in the moments where his character ends up being vulnerable. He does a great deal with what ends up being not all that much screen time, and he deserved the win over Michael Caine in The Cider House Rules. Caine’s a legendary actor, and he’s not all that bad in that movie, but he’s been so much better in so many other things, including the movie for which he won his first Oscar: Hannah and Her Sisters. Him winning a second one for The Cider House Rules when Tom Cruise in Magnolia was right there is honestly baffling.