Film academy to honour Beatty

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BEVERLY HILLS - The Motion Picture Academy will honour Warren Beatty for his life's work at the 72nd Academy Awards, the academy announced yesterday.

The actor, director, producer and writer will receive the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award on Oscar night, March 26.

"In discussing this award for Warren, our governors stressed his passion for film, for getting it just right," Robert Rehme, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, said.

The 62-year-old Beatty, brother of actress Shirley Maclaine, made his debut in Splendour in the Grass in 1961. Married to actress Annette Ben-ing, Beatty is the only person to be nominated for Oscars as producer, director, writer and actor on the same film, and that happened twice - for Heaven's Gate in 1978 and Reds in 1981. He won an Academy Award as best director for Reds.

The Thalberg Award was established in 1937 to honour "creative producers whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production," the academy said.

- NZPA