Tom Cruise wins German film award for courage

BERLIN (Reuters Life!) - U.S. actor Tom Cruise has won a German film award for his willingness to take risks in his films, media company Hubert Burda Media said on Wednesday.

The 'courage' award will be presented during the 59th annual Bambi Awards ceremony in the northern city of Duesseldorf on Thursday.

The prize committee said Cruise has pursued brave projects that otherwise would not have been made, including his newest film, "Valkyrie", which details the failed Operation Valkyrie plot to kill Adolf Hitler.

Cruise plays Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who tried to assassinate Hitler with a briefcase bomb on July 20, 1944.

"Tom Cruise is making an international public familiar with a story that has never before been the theme of a major Hollywood production: the German resistance against the Third Reich," the competition jury said in a statement.

Some resistance to Cruise's work in "Valkyrie" has come from inside German government ministries. The Defence Ministry tried to ban Cruise from filming at the "Bendlerblock" complex in Berlin where the conspirators were executed.

They relented after filmmakers persuaded them the movie would honour Stauffenberg. Cruise filmed at the Bendlerblock and elsewhere in Berlin this autumn.

Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung initially said he did not want Cruise to film at the site because the actor is a Scientologist, which the German government describes as a cult. The ministry later said they were concerned about preserving the dignity of the site.

The German media awards are named after the deer statuette winners receive. The daughter of one of the first winners said the figurine looked like the children's storybook character Bambi.