Shirley MacLaine Receives AFI Life Achievement Award at Sony

It was a star-studded gala at Sony Studios in Culver City on Thursday night, as Academy Award winner Shirley MacLaine was honored with the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award.

MacLaine, 78, is the 40^th recipient of the award. Previous recipients have included Orson Welles, Elizabeth Taylor, Steven Spielberg and Morgan Freeman.

Established in 1973, the AFI Life Achievement Award is presented each year to a single honoree, “whose talent has in a fundamental way advanced film art; whose accomplishment has been acknowledged by scholars, critics, professional peers and the general public; and whose work has stood the test of time.”

“Shirley MacLaine is a powerhouse personality that has illuminated screens large and small across six decades,” Sir Howard Stringer, chairman of AFI's Board of Trustees said in a written statement. “From ingénue to screen legend, Shirley has entertained a global audience through song, dance, laughter and tears, and her career as writer, director and producer is even further evidence of her passion for the art form and her seemingly boundless talents.”

MacLaine began her career as a dancer on Broadway in a revival of Oklahoma in the 1950s and made her film debut in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry.

Attendees at the gala included many of MacLaine’s costars in her films including Meryl Streep, Sally Field, Jack Nicholson, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Aniston and Jack Black as well as admirers including Morgan Freeman and Sidney Poitier.

MacLaine has appeared in more than 50 films, winning an Academy Award for her role as Debra Winger’s mother in the three-hankie weeper Terms of Endearment. She also earned Oscar nominations for her roles in Some Came Running, The Apartment, Irma La Douce, The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir and The Turning Point. She has also won six Gold Globe Awards and a Cecil B. DeMille award.

At the ceremony, MacLaine’s younger brother Warren Beatty (who received the same award in 2008), said, “"Tonight we are here to honor a person I have known, a person I have loved my whole life."

Many of those who spoke about the singer, dancer, actress, author and reincarnation aficionado cracked a few jokes about her past lives.

Meryl Streep presented MacLaine with the award and thanked her for showing Hollywood that some of her best roles were done as she grew older; thereby helping other actresses continue their careers past their 20s and 30s.

"Some performers are just indelible,” Streep said. “We fall early and we fall hard for them, and we follow them for the rest of our lives…That's our Shirl. That's you, babe."

- City News Service contributed to this report.

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