Oscar Nominees Luncheon Returns Home and Gets a Boost From Tom Cruise
It felt like old times at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Monday, as the Oscar Nominees Luncheon returned to the same room where it took place for decades after its beginnings in the 1980s. There were actors sitting next to sound mixers and directors with production designers, a record 182 nominees taking their seats in tables across three levels of the hotel’s ballroom and a “class photo” memorializing the event.There were stars galore among the attendees, from Cate Blanchett to Ke Huy Quan, Paul Mescal to Bill Nighy, Brian Tyree Henry to Kerry Condon to the biggest movie star of all, Tom Cruise, who was in the room not as an acting nominee but as the Oscar-nominated producer of “Top Gun: Maverick.” And all of them managed to fit onto the big, multilevel riser for the photograph that serves as the event’s most notable souvenir.