Veteran actor Glenn Close and director Ridley Scott among honorees at Governors Awards

Lifetime Achievement Honors

Glenn Close is finally set to receive an Academy Award statue and deliver a live acceptance speech at the Governors Awards in Los Angeles after facing eight previous nominations without a win. The seventy-nine-year-old actor shares the record for the most Oscar nominations without a competitive victory alongside Peter O'Toole. Her first nomination arrived in nineteen eighty-three for her role in The World According to Garp, followed by nods for features including Fatal Attraction and Hillbilly Elegy. Close told the Associated Press that realizing her first nomination came forty-three years ago makes the moment overwhelming, though her decorated career already spans three Emmy Awards, three Tony Awards, and three Golden Globes.

Additional Honorees

Filmmaker Ridley Scott will also receive an honorary Oscar during the event at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Ovation Hollywood. The eighty-eight-year-old director behind Alien, Blade Runner, and Gladiator secured four past nominations without a win, including best director nods for Thelma & Louise and Black Hawk Down, and will accept his prize via recorded video. Animator Floyd Norman, ninety-one, will be honored for a sixty-five-year career that began in nineteen fifty-six as the first Black animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios, where he contributed to Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians, and The Jungle Book. Meanwhile, Killer Films co-founders Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler will pick up the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award as the first female producing team and first independent producers to take home the prize for high-quality motion picture production.

Context

The Governors Awards are decided by a selection committee from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences rather than the full voting body. Since two thousand and nine, these lifetime achievement prizes have been handed out at a separate, non-televised gathering that now serves as an unofficial starting point for Hollywood award season campaigns.