The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has tapped actor Morgan Freeman as the recipient of this year’s Cecil B. DeMille Award, the organization’s lifetime achievement prize. Recent honorees have included Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg and Warren Beatty.
Actress Amy Adams and filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar were on hand at a press conference this morning to make the announcement. No, they have no connection to Freeman. But you know the HFPA and their celebrity fixation.
Freeman has been nominated for a Golden Globe five times, for the same five performances that netted him Oscar attention, in fact: “Street Smart” in 1987, “Driving Miss Daisy” in 1989 (he won the Globe but lost the Oscar to Daniel Day-Lewis in “My Left Foot”), “The Shawshank Redemption” in 1994, “Million Dollar Baby” in 2004 (he lost the Globe to Clive Owen in “Closer” but won the Oscar) and “Invictus” in 2009.
Favorite Freeman performances? I’d have to add “Se7en” and “Unforgiven” to that list. And “Lean on Me,” which had me terrified about what the heck high school would have to offer when I was a wee lad. It’s a good call for the organization (which is in the midst of a lawsuit with Dick Clark Productions over the rights to produce the garish annual Golden Globe Awards, the particulars of which would bore you silly). Freeman is hitting that mark, where lifetime achievement recognition just makes sense.
This year Freeman can be seen in “Dolphin Tale” and was the narrator of the “Conan the Barbarian” remake. (Remember that?) He’ll be seen next year in the highly anticipated “The Dark Knight Rises.”
The 69th annual Golden Globe Awards will take place on Sunday, January 15.
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