Woody Allen will be making a trip out to L.A. this awards season. The veteran filmmaker will be this year's recipient of the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes. The writer-director-actor-producer-composer-musician has made 55 films over a 60 year career.
Born Allen Konigsberg December 1, 1935 in Brooklyn, New York, he started selling one-liners to gossip columns at age 15. After working as a stand-up comedian, he was hired to write What’s New Pussycat in 1965. He directed his first film, What’s Up, Tiger Lily? one year later. The film as well as James Bond spoof Casino Royale in 1967, which he co-wrote and acted in, launched one of the most successful and unusual careers in American filmmaking history.
His long career includes films such as Bananas, Sleeper, Love and Death, Zelig, Annie Hall, Manhattan, Stardust Memories, Broadway Danny Rose, Mighty Aphrodite, Match Point and, more recently, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Midnight in Paris and his latest, Blue Jasmine.
“There is no one more worthy of this award than Woody Allen,” said HFPA president Theo Kingma. “His contributions to filmmaking have been phenomenal and he is an international treasure.”
Allen said the Hollywood Foreign Press Association which produces the annual Golden Globes that he has “a drawer full of notes and ideas for future movies and he is currently working on the next one, which will star Colin Firth, Emma Stone and Marcia Gay Harden and is as yet untitled.
“Fame has many drawbacks and many advantages and it’s close, but the advantages just outweigh the drawbacks,” he told HFPA members recently. “Believe it or not, there are many terrible things about being famous and many wonderful things, too.”
The first Cecil B. DeMille Award went to the man it was named after, in 1952, the year his penultimate film, The Greatest Show on Earth, had its premiere. Other recipients have included Walt Disney, Sidney Poitier, Henry Fonda, Paul Newman, Steven Spielberg, Robin Williams, Warren Beatty, Robert DeNiro and Jodie Foster who received the prize last year.
