LOS ANGELES – Glenn Close will finally hold an Oscar and deliver an acceptance speech Sunday night, after coming close to winning eight times and leaving each ceremony without the prize.
Long regarded as one of the greatest actors never to win a competitive Oscar, the 79-year-old Close will receive an honorary Academy Award for a remarkable five-decade career. The presentation will take place at the annual Governors Awards in the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Ovation Hollywood, the same complex that hosts the Academy Awards.
Ridley Scott will also receive an honorary Oscar. The 88-year-old director of “Alien,” “Blade Runner” and “Gladiator” has combined commercial success with critical acclaim more consistently than few filmmakers, yet he has never won despite four nominations. Those include best director nods for “Thelma & Louise” and “Black Hawk Down.” Scott will not attend the ceremony and will accept the honor in a recorded video.
Disney animator Floyd Norman and Killer Films producers Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler will also be honored.
Close’s eight Oscar nominations tie her with Peter O’Toole for the record among actors who have never won.
Her first nomination came in 1983 for “The World According to Garp.” She later earned recognition for her blockbuster performance as a rabbit-killing stalker in 1987’s “Fatal Attraction,” and most recently was nominated for 2020’s “Hillbilly Elegy.”
“I got my first Oscar nomination 43 years ago,” Close told The Associated Press this week. “So it’s been a life, you know? And it’s overwhelming.”
She has collected nearly every other major acting honor, including three Emmys, three Tonys and three Golden Globes.
The Governors Awards frequently recognize artists with extraordinary careers who have not won a competitive Oscar. Tom Cruise, who received an award last year, is one example.
The awards are named for the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. A selection committee chooses the recipients rather than the full Academy. The lifetime achievement honors were once presented during the Academy Awards, but since 2009 they have been given at a separate, nontelevised ceremony.
In addition to colleagues and other luminaries connected to the honorees, the event draws a growing number of young stars. It has become Hollywood’s unofficial launch of awards-season campaigning.
Norman, 91, started his 65-year career in 1956, when he became the first Black animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios. His work contributed to “Sleeping Beauty,” “101 Dalmatians” and “The Jungle Book.” In later decades, he worked on “Mulan,” “Toy Story 2” and “Monsters, Inc.”
“I still can’t believe it,” Norman told AP this week. “It’s mind-boggling. I’m certainly grateful and thankful. It’s the last thing I could ever have expected in a long, long career.”
Vachon and Koffler will receive the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, which honors “a creative producer whose body of work reflects a consistently high quality of motion picture production.”
They are the first female producing team and the first independent producers to receive the honor.
Vachon and Koffler founded the New York-based independent production company Killer Films in 1995. Their producing credits include “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” “One Hour Photo” and “May December.” Both received best picture Oscar nominations for “Past Lives” in 2024.
Killer Films’ body of work also includes “Velvet Goldmine,” “Happiness,” “Boys Don’t Cry,” “Far from Heaven” and “Carol.”
