Diane Keaton, actress and long time friend of Legendary Director Woody Allen, will be accepting the Cecil B. DeMille award on January 12th in his stead, a tribute in his honor at the 71st annual Golden Globe ceremony.
The Cecil B. DeMille Award is given to actors and directors that are seen to have had a substantial impact on the film industry. The president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Theo Kingma, said in his announcement regarding Allen’s nomination, “There is no one more worthy of this award than Woody Allen, His contributions to filmmaking have been phenomenal and he truly is an international treasure.”
There is no arguing his impact on the film industry. He is one of the most recognizable directors of all time, and there are few better qualified to receive the award on his behalf than Diane Keaton, who had a five-year relationship with Woody. Keaton appeared in several of his movies, most notably in the 1976 film Annie Hall, which won both an Oscar and a Golden Globe.
Woody Allen is well know for skiving off award ceremonies. He only showed up once, despite 23 nominations and four Oscar wins, as an ambassador of New York at the 2002 Academy Awards, thanking the Hollywood film industry for its support in the wake of 9/11.
Allen’s movie The Purple Rose of Cairo was the film that pulled me into a life long love of the cinema, with the moral of the story seeming to be, that choosing the real world is the wrong choice – always choose the dream. His unconventional story lines, and penchant for breaking the fourth wall are trademarks of his story telling style. He has been a writer and director since the early 1950’s, and still remains prolific, averaging a film a year, with out the quality of his pictures waning, if anything they have become more poignant over time.
Source: Deadline Hollywood
Photo by TriStar Pictures, 1993
