Friars Club to Honor Tom Cruise With Entertainment Icon Award

The Friars Club will present its Entertainment Icon Award to Tom Cruise at its annual Friars Foundation next month.

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The award, the group's highest honor, will be bestowed on Cruise on June 12 at the Waldorf-Astoria in midtown Manhattan.

The organization has given out the award only three times in its 108-year history. Previous recipients are Douglas Fairbanks, Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra.

Unlike a Friars Club roast, the Icon Award is an opportunity to "pay tribute to someone whose accomplishments transcend the entertainment industry by positively redefining the very culture we live in," the organization said.
 
"Tom Cruise will join an elite group of only three other entertainment legends who have received our Icon Award and whose work has made a global impact on our industry and changed the face of cinema," said Friars Club abbot Jerry Lewis.
 
Friars Foundation chairman Joseph Zappala said: "This will be an incredible night that will live forever in our club’s history. We are so proud to be presenting this unique honor to Tom Cruise, whose humanitarian endeavors mirror his accomplishments in cinema and the arts."
 
The Friars Club was founded in 1904 as a meeting place for entertainers. Its foundation is the charitable arm of the club.

E-mail: Georg.Szalai@thr.com

Twitter: @georgszalai