Two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks can now add the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s (HFPA) Cecil B. DeMille Award to his mantle of prizes.
The HFPA has announced that Hanks, currently sparking Academy Awards buzz for his turn as Mister Rogers in the upcoming “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” will receive the honor at the 77th-annual Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, January 5, 2020. The Cecil B. DeMille prize is the equivalent of a lifetime achievement award.
With a clip show, and a likely moving acceptance speech from Hanks, this honorary moment at the Golden Globes ceremony (airing at 5:00 p.m. PT/8:00 p.m. ET) will provide a nice boost for the 2020 Oscar contender before Academy voting closes on January 7.
“The Hollywood Foreign Press Association is proud to bestow the 2020 Cecil B. DeMille Award to Tom Hanks,” said HFPA President Lorenzo Soria. “For more than three decades, he’s captivated audiences with rich and playful characters that we’ve grown to love and admire. As compelling as he is on the silver screen, he’s equally so behind the camera as a writer, producer and director. We’re honored to include Mr. Hanks with such luminaries as Oprah Winfrey, George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Martin Scorsese, and Barbra Streisand to name a few.”
Hanks received back-to-back Oscars for playing AIDS-stricken lawyer Andrew Beckett in Jonathan Demme’s “Philadelphia,” followed by his iconic performance in the title role in Robert Zemeckis’ “Forrest Gump.” Hanks was also nominated for “Big,” “Saving Private Ryan,” and “Cast Away,” but was sorely overlooked for 2013’s “Captain Phillips.” In 2002, Hanks received the AFI Life Achievement Award. He was later honored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center with the Chaplin Award in 2009. In 2014, Hanks received a Kennedy Center Honor.
Chosen by the HFPA Board of Directors, Cecil B. DeMille Award honorees over the decades include Jeff Bridges, Robert De Niro, Audrey Hepburn, Harrison Ford, Jodie Foster, Sophia Loren, Sidney Poitier, Steven Spielberg, Denzel Washington, Robin Williams, and more.
Toronto International Film Festival audiences raved about “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” after its world premiere. The film centers on the friendship between Fred Rogers (Hanks) and journalist Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys). The cynical writer is forced to take an assignment from Esquire to write a profile on Rogers, but the job turns out to be a surprising one as Rogers’ perspective on life — sunnily documented in Morgan Neville’s 2018 doc “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” — begins to change Vogel.
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