Why Tom Cruise Is Not at the 2023 Oscars

Tom Cruise will not be at the 95th Academy Awards.

ET has confirmed the Top Gun: Maverick star's absence is due to him already being back on set overseas for Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning Part II in the United Kingdom. Top Gun: Maverick is nominated for six Oscars. Should the film win the night's biggest category (Best Picture), producer Jerry Bruckheimer will accept the award. 

Besides Best Picture, the film is also nominated for Writing (Adapted Screenplay), Film Editing, Sound, Music (Original Song) and Visual Effects.

News that Cruise will not be in Hollywood for the event comes just hours after it was revealed Lady Gaga will, in fact, perform her Oscar-nominated Top Gun: Maverick single, "Hold My Hand." It had previously been reported she would not be able to make the event, but plans changed and she'll now not only attend but also perform her hit song.

Initially, Oscars producer Glen Weiss said Gaga was invited to perform but was unable to make the commitment at the time. 

Because she's in the middle of shooting a new movie, Weiss said Gaga didn't feel like she could deliver a performance at the caliber that she's used to doing at the annual awards show.  

That movie, of course, is Joker: Folie à Deux, a sequel to 2019's Joker, which started production at the end of 2022. 

Earlier this year, Jay Ellis spoke with ET and reflected on the film's massive success at the box office and the opportunity to work with Hollywood royalty.

"It's wild, man. It's wild," Ellis said at the premiere of his new film, Somebody I Used to Know, explaining that when they all first started working on the sequel four years ago, "We just wanted people to go see it. We just wanted to work with Tom Cruise. We just wanted to work with [producer] Jerry Bruckheimer and [director] Joe Kosinski." 

He added, "This is a dream." 

The 2023 Academy Awards hosted by Jimmy Kimmel will air live on Sunday, March 12 starting at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on ABC. In the meantime, keep checking back into ETonline.com for complete Oscars coverage.

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