Actor Tom Cruise returned his three Golden Globe awards as the intense backlash against the committee behind the awards ceremony continues.
Deadline reported that it “hears” the actor has sent his three awards to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s (HFPA) headquarters: The Best Actor award he won in 1990 for “Born on the Fourth of July,” the Best Actor award he won in 1997 for “Jerry Maguire,” and the Best Supporting Actor prize he won in 2000 for “Magnolia.”
“Sources” told Deadline that the awards were sent very recently.
Cruise’s apparent protest comes as the HFPA, which oversees the Golden Globes, finds itself embroiled in controversy over allegations of ethical violations and its lack of diversity. As The Daily Wire’s Charlotte Pence Bond reported in late February, the HFPA faced allegations that it provided payments to its own members that could violate IRS guidelines. An investigation by The Los Angeles Times found “that the nonprofit HFPA regularly issues substantial payments to its own members in ways that some experts say could run afoul of Internal Revenue Service guidelines. HFPA members collected nearly $2 million in payments from the group in its fiscal year ending in June 2020 for serving on various committees and performing other tasks — more than double the level three years earlier.”
The HFPA denied the allegations, telling the Times, “None of these allegations has ever been proven in court or in any investigation, [and they] simply repeat old tropes about the HFPA and reflect unconscious bias against the HFPA’s diverse membership.”
The main problem with the HFPA, however, has become the revelation that it didn’t have even a single black member. The Los Angeles Times investigated the HFPA and published emails from members discussing the lack of diversity. Previously, HFPA President Theo Kingma told the Times that the organization was working to change its voting body.
“It is something that we should give a serious look at; times have changed, but sadly our bylaws don’t change as quickly,” he told the outlet Thursday.
That interview irked some other HFPA members, including Dierk Sindermann, who represents Austria, Germany, and Switzerland in the committee. Sindermann wrote an email to Kingma decrying his interview, writing, “Maybe I misunderstood you as the HFPA counsel but to my recollection you urged members not to comment publicly on internal affairs. Does this rule not apply any more?”
In his interview with the Times last week, Kingma said that the black woman who was denied a place in the HFPA in 2013, British-based Samantha Ofole-Prince, was denied a place because “she didn’t fulfill the [bylaws] requirements.”
Sindermann wrote in his email that Ofole-Prince was rejected by the HFPA because she didn’t have “sufficient votes.”
The controversy has led to significant fallout for the embattled organization. Last week Netflix announced that it would not work with the HFPA until it made “more meaningful changes,” The Daily Wire reported. On Monday, NBC announced it wouldn’t air the awards ceremony until the organization fixed its problems.