Did Tom Cruise refuse Kennedy Center award from Trump?

In August 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump announced the annual Kennedy Center Honors, an award given to those who have made significant contributions to arts and culture. The announcement of the awards ceremony, scheduled to be held in December 2025, named actor Sylvester Stallone, singer Gloria Gaynor and rock band KISS, among others, as recipients. However, according to several reports, one notable name — Tom Cruise — declined to receive the honor.

Social media users on X and Facebook (archived) spread the claim and praised the actor's supposed decision.

Anonymous Kennedy Center employees were the main sources of this news, per The Washington Post. Unnamed individuals told the newspaper that Cruise declined the award on account of scheduling conflicts. Snopes does not rely on anonymous sources and could not independently verify the credibility of the sources the Post used in its report.

We reached out to Cruise's public relations team and the Kennedy Center and will update this story if we get more information. Given that Cruise's team has so far declined to comment to the media and the claim's original sources were anonymous, we were unable to rate this claim nor the implication by some that Cruise's supposed decision to decline the award was politically motivated.

The Post simply stated:

Actor Tom Cruise was offered the honors but declined because of scheduling conflicts, according to several current and former Kennedy Center employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss event plans. A spokesperson for Cruise declined to comment.

While some (archived) social media users (archived) appeared to imply that Cruise's supposed rejection of a Kennedy Center Honor was politically motivated, we found no evidence of this implication. 

In May 2025, during a press event for his newest Mission: Impossible movie, Cruise sidestepped a question about Trump's tariffs, answering, "We'd rather answer questions about the movie. Thank you."

Cruise has not joined other celebrities like Taylor Swift (archived) or Sylvester Stallone — one of Trump's Kennedy Center honorees — in endorsing a particular political party or politician.

When selecting this year's honorees, Trump reportedly said at a March 2025 Kennedy Center board meeting, "We'll go slightly more conservative, if you don't mind, with some of the people. There are people out there that would not be considered that are much bigger stars than the ones that were being honored."

Snopes has frequently covered rumors about Cruise, including the fake story that he walked off "The View" after being questioned about Scientology, a movement the actor is an outspoken advocate for.