He was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1986, the Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award for Excellence in Film and the David Special in 2005, and the Honorary Palme d'Or in 2022.

Cruise was nominated for four Academy Awards for his Best Actor playing Sergeant Ron Kovic in the biographical anti-war film Born on the Fourth of July (1989) and a sports agent in romantic sports drama Jerry Maguire (1996) and Best Supporting Actor playing a chauvinist motivational speaker in the epic drama Magnolia (1999).

He won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama for Born on the Fourth of July (1989) and Jerry Maguire and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture for Magnolia (1999).

He was Globe-nominated for playing a high school student in the coming-of-age comedy Risky Business (1983), a lawyer in the legal drama in A Few Good Men (1992), a soldier in the epic The Last Samurai (2003), profane studio executive in the war comedy Tropic Thunder (2008), and Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in the action film Top Gun: Maverick (2022).

He received two Critics' Choice Super Awards for Best Actor in an Action Film for both Top Gun: Maverick (2022) and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (2023).