LOS ANGELES, Dec. 1, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- DGA President Michael Apted announced today that director Clint Eastwood has been selected to receive the Directors Guild of America Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his distinguished career in motion picture directing. As the Guild's highest tribute, the Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented to Eastwood, one of the industry's finest practitioners, at the 58th Annual DGA Awards on January 28, 2006.
"Clint Eastwood is the consummate filmmaker," Apted said in announcing the award. "As one of the most prolific, versatile directors in the history of the medium, there isn't a genre that Clint Eastwood hasn't mastered in the more than 25 films he has directed over the past 35 years. The DGA is proud to honor his deft craftsmanship and brilliant vision with its Lifetime Achievement Award. His ongoing body of work continues to touch generations of moviegoers and bring huge audiences into movie theaters. He does it all with great class, intelligence, and style."
The DGA Lifetime Achievement Award winner is selected by the present and past presidents of the Guild. In the Guild's 70-year history, only 31 directors have been recognized with the honor as the award is not presented on an annual basis. Eastwood now joins this illustrious list, which includes Mike Nichols, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, Billy Wilder, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Capra and John Ford. (A complete list of winners appears below.)
In addition to the DGA Lifetime Achievement Award, Eastwood received the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement this year for his 2004 film Million Dollar Baby, which also won him Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture. The film earned a total of seven Academy Award nominations, four Oscars, two Golden Globes for Best Director and Best Actress, and the New York Film Critics Award for Best Director. Eastwood's 1992 film Unforgiven was also met with unparalleled critical acclaim, receiving in 1993 the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement, nine Academy Award nominations, four Oscars including Best Director, and the Golden Globe for Best Director. In 2004, Eastwood was nominated for both the DGA Award the Academy Award for his direction of Mystic River. Among Eastwood's other innumerable accolades are: the prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (1995), the Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute and the Film Society at Lincoln Center (1996), the Lifetime Career Achievement Award from New York's National Board of Review (2000), the Kennedy Center Honors Award (2000), and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award (2003).
With a film directing career that has spanned over three decades, Eastwood's other feature credits include the current Flags of Our Fathers (2006), Blood Work (2002), Space Cowboys (2000), True Crime (1998), Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1996), Absolute Power (1996), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), A Perfect World (1993), The Rookie (1990), White Hunter, Black Heart (1989), Bird (1988), Heartbreak Ridge (1987), Pale Rider (1985), Sudden Impact (1983), Honkytonk Man (1982), Firefox (1982), Bronco Billy (1980), The Gauntlet (1977), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), The Eiger Sanction (1975), High Plains Drifter (1973), Breezy (1973), and Play Misty For Me (1971).
Born Clinton Eastwood Jr. on May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, California, Eastwood was raised in Oakland, California, after moving from town to town as his father sought work during the Great Depression. He began his career in 1957 as a contract player for Universal Pictures and got his first break on the TV series Rawhide (1958), in which he played cowpuncher Rowdy Yates for six years. Eastwood's association with jazz is well documented, as is his assertion that had his directing, acting or producing careers not been successful, he would have chosen to be a musician. His documentary Piano Blues, in which Eastwood explores his life-long passion for piano blues, concluded Martin Scorsese's 2003 series The Blues for PBS.
On Thursday, January 5, 2006, the DGA will release the names of its five nominees for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film in a 10 a.m. press conference at the Guild's Los Angeles headquarters at 7920 W. Sunset Blvd.
The DGA Lifetime Achievement Award was first presented in 1953, and has been bestowed thirty-one times.
1953 Cecil B. De Mille 1985 Billy Wilder 1954 John Ford 1986 Joseph L. Mankiewicz 1956 Henry King 1987 Elia Kazan 1957 King Vidor 1988 Robert E. Wise 1959 Frank Capra 1990 Ingmar Bergman 1960 George Stevens 1992 Akira Kurosawa 1961 Frank Borzage 1993 Sidney Lumet 1966 William Wyler 1994 Robert Altman 1968 Alfred Hitchcock 1995 James Ivory 1970 Fred Zinnemann 1996 Woody Allen 1973 David Lean 1997 Stanley Kubrick 1973 William A. Wellman 1998 Francis Ford Coppola 1981 George Cukor 2000 Steven Spielberg 1982 Rouben Mamoulian 2003 Martin Scorsese 1983 John Huston 2004 Mike Nichols 1984 Orson Welles