Angela Bassett, Mel Brooks to receive honorary Oscars
Angela Bassett may have gone home empty-handed at the Oscars in March, but the two-time nominee will be getting a golden statuette this year after all—and in very good company too. In November, Bassett, Mel Brooks and film editor Carol Littleton will receive honorary Oscars at the Governors Awards, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said on Monday.
Michelle Satter, the founding senior director of the Sundance Institute’s Artist Programs, will also be given the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the untelevised event. “The Academy’s Board of Governors is thrilled to honour four trailblazers who have transformed the film industry and inspired generations of filmmakers and movie fans,” Janet Yang, the academy’s president, said in a statement.
Most recipients of the academy’s honorary awards have not won competitive Oscars. Brooks, is an exception, however, having won an original screenplay Oscar for The Producers.
At the ceremony, in 1969, he said he wanted to ‘thank the academy of arts sciences and money for this wonderful award’. In his speech, which had the audience in stitches, he also thanked Gene Wilder three times.
The 96-year-old, who began his career writing for Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, and over the next 70 years would write, direct, act, produce for film, television and Broadway and write books, including a recent memoir, is among the rare breed of EGOT-winners (those who have won Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Awards.)
Bassett, 64, whose credits include Boyz N the Hood, Malcolm X, Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back, received her first Oscar nomination for the portrayal of Tina Turner in What’s Love Got to Do With It and her second earlier this year for playing the grieving queen in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
The honorary awards are given, “to honour extraordinary distinction in lifetime achievement, exceptional contributions to the state of motion picture arts and sciences, or for outstanding service to the Academy.” — AP
