STROP GUN!
Cruise and team won’t attend the Baftas after Best Film nod snub
WE ALL know what an Anglophile Tom Cruise is – and who can forget how assiduously he courted Prince William and Kate Middleton, who shone at the UK premiere of Top Gun: Maverick.
But it seems the A-list star won’t be at the Baftas tomorrow – and nor will any of his Top Gun team.
In what some are seeing as a pointed snub, actor Cruise, Top Gun producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Cruise’s producing partner and best friend Chris McQuarrie are going to stay away from the ceremony, which will be held at the Royal Festival Hall and broadcast on BBC1. They have not RSVP’d to Bafta, and representatives for all the men declined to comment to the Mail this week.
Top Gun: Maverick was one of the most successful films of the year, tempting audiences back into cinemas in their droves. The bigbudget studio picture was, unusually, also met with virtually universal critical acclaim.
A senior film source tells me that there was ‘disappointment’ over a perceived ‘lack of love’ for the film at Bafta, where it was not nominated for Best Film; nor was there a nomination for Cruise himself.
It is still shortlisted in four categories – cinematography, editing, sound and special visual effects. Representatives of the film in these categories will be at the awards do.
Cruise, 60, is, incidentally, thought to be in the UK filming Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part Two, along with McQuarrie.
Top Gun 2, which stars Cruise as test pilot Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell, has been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, which are held next month, and for a time there was even talk that Cruise might snag a Best Actor nomination, although that did not happen.
He did, however, show up at the Oscars nominees luncheon this week in LA, in effervescent form.
The Bafta ceremony, hosted by Richard E. Grant, will still be brimming of A-listers.
Presenters include Catherine Zeta-Jones, Regé-Jean Page and Lily James, and nominees attending include Brendan Fraser, Colin Farrell, Austin Butler, Cate Blanchett, Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Lee Curtis, Danielle Deadwyler and Carey Mulligan.