Angela Lansbury Receives Her Honorary Oscar
Posted: November 17th, 2013, 11:39 am
Last night at the Academy's Governor's Ball, Angela Lansbury, Steve Martin, and costume designer Piero Tosi (with an unexpected surprise appearance by Claudia Cardinale) received their special Academy Awards. Angelina Jolie became the youngest recipient of the Jean Hersholt award.
But it was Lansbury, from the sounds of things, that brought the house down. And guess who she asked to present the award to her?
From the Hollywood Reporter:
The beloved 88-year-old three-time Oscar nominee -- for Gaslight, The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Manchurian Candidate, all in the supporting actress category -- whose fans have lobbied the Academy for years to give her an honorary Oscar, at long last got one. (She became the oldest actress to ever receive the prize, surpassing Myrna Loy by three years.)
Emma Thompson, her adoring costar in Nanny McPhee (2005), recalled her being a good sport when she had to have a pie thrown in her face for a scene in that film. Then, a James Earl Jones-narrated video reviewed highlights of her career, including the fact that she started out making $500 a week at MGM; became the youngest two-time acting Oscar nominee in history at age of 20; acted opposite everyone from Katharine Hepburn to Orson Welles to Judy Garland; and decided to leave movies almost entirely after finding herself repeatedly cast as mothers, which resulted in the beginning of a magnificent new career of Broadway and on television in the hit show Murder, She Wrote. Geoffrey Rush, with whom she appeared in a 2009 play on the Great White Way, called her "the living definition of range" and asked rhetorically, "When they talk about the Golden Age of Hollywood, aren't they just talking about you?"
Then emerged Robert Osborne, the film historian and host of the Turner Classic Movies channel, who complimented the Academy's Board of Governors on "one of the best decisions they've ever made" and told Lansbury, "Nobody deserves this golden boy more than you... Ms. Lansbury, here is your Academy Award at last."
Lansbury took the stage to the loudest standing ovation of the night, tearing up before mustering the words, "This is amazing." She said she'd asked Osborne to speak because virtually all of her collaborators have passed away -- "They were long gone, and I was still around" -- and because, she said, she owes a debt to TCM and Osborne "for keeping me alive all these years." She closed, "You can't imagine how happy and proud I feel," but guaranteed that it was much better than how she felt "shivering with hope and then disappointment" all those years ago when she previously thought she might leave an Academy gathering with an Oscar.
For more on the on the evening, go here: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/g ... air-656780
But it was Lansbury, from the sounds of things, that brought the house down. And guess who she asked to present the award to her?
From the Hollywood Reporter:
The beloved 88-year-old three-time Oscar nominee -- for Gaslight, The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Manchurian Candidate, all in the supporting actress category -- whose fans have lobbied the Academy for years to give her an honorary Oscar, at long last got one. (She became the oldest actress to ever receive the prize, surpassing Myrna Loy by three years.)
Emma Thompson, her adoring costar in Nanny McPhee (2005), recalled her being a good sport when she had to have a pie thrown in her face for a scene in that film. Then, a James Earl Jones-narrated video reviewed highlights of her career, including the fact that she started out making $500 a week at MGM; became the youngest two-time acting Oscar nominee in history at age of 20; acted opposite everyone from Katharine Hepburn to Orson Welles to Judy Garland; and decided to leave movies almost entirely after finding herself repeatedly cast as mothers, which resulted in the beginning of a magnificent new career of Broadway and on television in the hit show Murder, She Wrote. Geoffrey Rush, with whom she appeared in a 2009 play on the Great White Way, called her "the living definition of range" and asked rhetorically, "When they talk about the Golden Age of Hollywood, aren't they just talking about you?"
Then emerged Robert Osborne, the film historian and host of the Turner Classic Movies channel, who complimented the Academy's Board of Governors on "one of the best decisions they've ever made" and told Lansbury, "Nobody deserves this golden boy more than you... Ms. Lansbury, here is your Academy Award at last."
Lansbury took the stage to the loudest standing ovation of the night, tearing up before mustering the words, "This is amazing." She said she'd asked Osborne to speak because virtually all of her collaborators have passed away -- "They were long gone, and I was still around" -- and because, she said, she owes a debt to TCM and Osborne "for keeping me alive all these years." She closed, "You can't imagine how happy and proud I feel," but guaranteed that it was much better than how she felt "shivering with hope and then disappointment" all those years ago when she previously thought she might leave an Academy gathering with an Oscar.
For more on the on the evening, go here: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/g ... air-656780