The Mission Impossible star’s ceremonial event with France’s culture minister took place just hours before the Paris Olympics kick-off.
Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise attends the Wimbledon Tennis Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club on July 13, 2024 in London, England.Karwai Tang

It seems like Tom Cruise has been everywhere these days. The superstar—who’s ostensibly mid-shoot for Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning 2—has somehow found time in the last month to also attend a Taylor Swift show, the Glastonbury Festival, and Wimbledon. (His daughter’s graduation, not so much.) And on Friday, his schedule included the opening ceremony for the Paris Olympics. But first, there was a secret induction into a centuries-old French order to attend.

The news broke in an early-morning tweet from Rachida Dati, France’s Minister of Culture and former spokesperson for past French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who was since convicted of fraud following a 2012 bid for an additional term. “Congratulations to @TomCruise who is named a Knight of Arts and Letters by the Republic!,” the French-language tweet reads.

“His filming of ‘Mission Impossible’ in Paris in 2017 beautifully showcased our capital. His passionate defense of cinemas inspires all lovers of the big screen.”

(Dati is presumably referring to Mission Impossible: Fallout in her post, in which writer-director Christopher McQuarrie ran Cruise and other members of the MI team through their paces along the city’s twisty streets.)

According to Deadline, the award was conferred during a “somewhat secret ceremony” Friday, during which Cruise was named a Knight of the Legion of Honor. The award, which was established Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802, is widely known as France’s highest civilian award. Previous American honorees have included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, and disability awareness activist Helen Keller.

But while Tom Cruise’s induction into the Legion was kept out of the public eye, a few hours later he was back in it. Via Instagram story, James Wilkie Broderick, the son of actors Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, posted photos of his parents at the opening ceremonies for the Olympics. Next to them at their perch over the Seine was Cruise, gesturing with arms wide, as if to say “I once fished in this river, and caught a fish this big.”