Tom Cruise lived up to his billing as the "last true movie star" as nearly 200 of this year's Oscar nominees gathered to celebrate — and size up their competition — at an annual luncheon on Monday.
In a room packed with A-listers such as Steven Spielberg and Cate Blanchett, there was no doubt Cruise remained the biggest draw, with a crowd of well-wishers, from Hollywood moguls to Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai, lining up to greet him during the event.
Cruise is nominated this year as a producer of Top Gun: Maverick, in which he also starred. The film is considered a growing front-runner for the Best Picture Oscar — Hollywood's most prestigious prize.
"It's been incredible... I just want to get people into theatres," Cruise said.
"But this is lovely," he admitted, motioning to the Beverly Hilton ballroom, packed with Oscar nominees and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voters, and kitted out with giant golden statuettes and open champagne bars.
The 95th Academy Awards will be held on March 12.
Academy voters this year handed out various nominations for box office smash hits such as Top Gun: Maverick, Avatar: The Way of Water and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever — raising hopes that Oscars TV audiences will pick back up.
"The awards gods have smiled on us — there's nothing we can do about that," joked Glenn Weiss, who is returning to produce next month's Oscars telecast ceremony.
During her luncheon speech, the academy's president Janet Yang also reiterated her wish to leave behind the "unprecedented" controversy of last year, when Will Smith infamously slapped Chris Rock live on the Oscars stage before being banned.
"What happened on stage was totally unacceptable. And the response from our organisation was inadequate," she said.
Smith was allowed to remain at the Oscars and accept his Best Actor prize after striking Rock, and was only later banned from attending the Academy Awards for a decade.
The academy "must act compassionately and decisively" in times of crisis, said Yang, to applause.
After lunch, the names of all 182 attending nominees, plus directors representing their countries in the international feature film category, were read out, and the nominees posed for the traditional, giant-sized "class photo".
Everything Everywhere All at Once, a quirky sci-fi with a predominantly Asian cast that is many pundits' tip for Best Picture winner, earned the most nominations this year with 11, and its cast received many of the loudest cheers.
"We paid them a lot of money to do that!" said Best Actress nominee Michelle Yeoh, describing the indie film's giant success as "a dream come true".
Colin Farrell and Austin Butler, Best Actor nominees and stars of Best Picture rivals The Banshees of Inisherin and Elvis, also drew raucous cheers from the luncheon crowd.
Notable by her absence was Andrea Riseborough, who controversially earned a coveted Best Actress nomination after an intense, last-minute social media campaign mounted by prominent celebrities.
But among the nominees present was Kazuo Ishiguro, nominated for writing the screenplay of the British drama Living, about five years after he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in Stockholm.
"This is very different... This is like some version of the American dream. So many people dream about being here," he said.
"The Oscars are more like an election — there's a lot more campaigning" than for other famous awards, he added.
His fellow Nobel prizewinner, Pakistani activist Yousafzai, attended as an executive producer of Stranger at the Gate, a short documentary about a US Marine veteran who plotted to blow up a mosque in his home town.
"It's surreal," she said after meeting Cruise. "I've seen him on the screen and now I'm seeing him in person."
Scroll through the gallery below for pictures of all the Best Picture nominees for Oscars 2023
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Stephanie Hsu, Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan in a scene from Everything Everywhere All At Once. The film has earned the most nominations for the Oscars 2023 with 11 nods including Best Picture. Photo: A24 Films -
Jake Sully, performed by Sam Worthington, and Neytiri, performed by Zoe Saldana in a scene from Avatar: The Way of Water. Photo: 20th Century Studios -
Austin Butler in a scene from Elvis. Photo: Warner Bros Pictures -
Colin Farrell in The Banshees of Inisherin. Photo: Searchlight Pictures -
Keeley Karsten, Sophia Kopera, Michelle Williams and Gabriel LaBelle in The Fabelmans. Photo: Universal Pictures -
Cate Blanchett in a scene from Tár. Photo: Focus Features -
Tom Cruise as Captain Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick. Photo: Paramount Pictures -
A scene from Triangle of Sadness. Photo: Curzon -
Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy, Michelle McLeod and Jessie Buckley in Women Talking. Photo: Orion - United Artists Releasing -
Felix Kammerer in All Quiet on the Western Front. Photo: Netflix
