Robert De Niro will be the next recipient of the Chaplin Award. The Academy Award-winning actor will receive this honor at the 44th Chaplin Award Gala on Monday, May 8, 2017 by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.
The annual event will be attended by a host of notable guests and presenters and will include movie and interview clips, and the presentation of the Chaplin Award.
From the official press release: “The evening will celebrate all the facets of De Niro’s remarkable forty-plus-year career in cinema, including his amazing array of performances, which have resulted in some of the most memorable characters committed to film; his status as an unparalleled figure of New York film and culture; and his championing of independent film through the Tribeca Film Festival and Tribeca Film Institute.
“His portrayal of New York characters has helped define this city for the entire world,” said Ann Tenenbaum, the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Board Chairman.
“De Niro has long been such a legendary presence that one can overlook the remarkably fine-tuned craft and quality he has brought to his roles over his multi-decade career,” said Lesli Klainberg, the Executive Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center. “If you watch his performances, from Mean Streets and The Godfather Part II to Raging Bull and Awakenings and on to his more recent work in such films as Silver Linings Playbook, you see a dramatic range and unwavering commitment to his work.”
De Niro’s prolific motion picture career was launched in 1968 with Brian De Palma’s Greetings. In 1974, he won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor in recognition of his critically acclaimed performance in Bang the Drum Slowly and from the National Society of Film Critics for Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets.
Among his many awards, in 1975, De Niro won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II. In 1980, he won his second Oscar, as Best Actor, for his portrayal of Jake La Motta in Scorsese’s Raging Bull. In 2009, De Niro was named by the coveted Kennedy Center Honors for his distinguished acting career. He also received the Hollywood Actor Award from the Hollywood Film Festival, which he won again in 2012; the Stanley Kubrick Award from the BAFTA Britannia Awards; and the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 2011 Golden Globe Awards. He also served as the jury president of the 64th Cannes Film Festival.
De Niro recently starred in David O. Russell’s American Hustle and Joy, Jonathan Jakubowicz’s Hands of Stone, Dan Mazer’s Dirty Grandpa, Nancy Meyers’s The Intern, Peter Segal’s Grudge Match, Jon Turteltaub’s Last Vegas, and Luc Besson’s The Family. He’ll next star in The Comedian, directed by Taylor Hackford, and as Bernie Madoff in HBO’s Wizard of Lies, directed by Barry Levinson and produced by Tribeca Productions.
The Film Society’s Annual Gala began in 1972 when it honored Charlie Chaplin, who returned to the U.S. from exile to accept the commendation. Since then, the award has been renamed for Chaplin, and has been presented to many of the film industry’s most notable talents, including Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Laurence Olivier, Federico Fellini, Elizabeth Taylor, Bette Davis, James Stewart, Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sidney Poitier, Barbra Streisand, Robert Redford, and, last year, Morgan Freeman.
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