The board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has voted to present actress Glenn Close, animator Floyd Norman and director-producer Ridley Scott with honorary awards and producers Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 17th annual Governors Awards, the organization announced Wednesday.
The honorees — who were selected in the final decision made by the 55 governors who served on the Academy’s board during the 2025-2026 term, including actress Marlee Matlin; directors Ava DuVernay and Jason Reitman; executives Pam Abdy, Peter Kujawski and Hannah Minghella; composer Carter Burwell; producer Jason Blum and writer Larry Karaszewski — will be fêted at a black-tie ceremony at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Ovation Hollywood in Los Angeles on Sunday, Nov. 15.
“The Academy’s board of governors is thrilled to present this year’s Governors Awards to five remarkable individuals whose groundbreaking work has forever shaped the art of filmmaking,” Academy president Lynette Howell Taylor said in a statement. “Throughout her extraordinary body of work, Glenn Close’s unparalleled emotional range has brought to life some of the most complex characters in cinema. Floyd Norman is the legendary animator who has broken barriers and inspired generations of artists over his remarkable career. Sir Ridley Scott is a true visionary whose decades-long legacy has left an immeasurable impact on global cinema and culture. And Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler play a central role in American independent cinema, championing bold, ambitious and distinctive storytelling.”
The board annually bestows honorary awards for lifetime achievement. (Previous recipients include Charlie Chaplin, Walt Disney, Louis B. Mayer, Greta Garbo, Cary Grant, Federico Fellini, Sidney Poitier, Steve Martin, Gena Rowlands and, last year, Tom Cruise and Dolly Parton.) On occasion, it also chooses to present the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, which recognizes the achievements of a creative producer and/or executive (honorees have included Darryl F. Zanuck, David O. Selznick, Jack Warner, Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall and Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson) and/or the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, celebrating remarkable service to others (honorees have included Frank Sinatra, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Oprah Winfrey). Each of these honors now comes in the form of an Oscar statuette.
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Close, 79, has received eight Oscar nominations for performances, more than all but three other actresses dead or alive — Meryl Streep (21), Katharine Hepburn (12) and Bette Davis (11) — and each of them won multiple times. Two actresses have received the same number of Oscar noms as Close — Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett — and both won at least once. Close, however, has never won, placing her in a tie with Peter O’Toole for the record of most acting noms without a win. O’Toole, however, received an honorary Oscar in 2002, and is now dead, so Close is in sole possession of the undesirable record for living person with the most acting Oscar noms without a win.
It’s all kind of crazy, considering the length of her film career, variety of her film parts and number of her memorable performances. Her noms — which included five in a span of just seven years, something matched only by Greer Garson, Davis, Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson and Streep — are equally split between leading performances (1987’s Fatal Attraction, 1988’s Dangerous Liaisons, 2011’s Albert Nobbs and 2018’s The Wife) and supporting performances (1982’s The World According to Garp, 1983’s The Big Chill, 1984’s The Natural and 2020’s Hillbilly Elegy). And she could just as easily have also been nominated for 1985’s Jagged Edge and Maxie, 1990’s Reversal of Fortune (Jeremy Irons won best actor for his performance opposite her), 1994’s The Paper, 1996’s 101 Dalmatians (arguably the most terrifying performance in a Disney kids movie) and 1997’s Air Force One.
She has found greater awards appreciation for her work in theater (three Tonys) and television (three Emmys).
[Listen to Close’s 2018 interview on THR’s Awards Chatter podcast.]
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Norman, 90, began his esteemed 65-year career at Walt Disney Animation Studios in 1956, and became its first Black animator. His first Disney feature film was Sleeping Beauty, and he contributed to other Disney classics including The Sword in the Stone, Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book and Robin Hood, as well as numerous shorts. Other notable credits include The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mulan, Monsters, Inc. and Toy Story 2. A friend and mentor to many younger animators and storyboard artists, he was also the subject of a 2016 documentary feature, Floyd Norman: An Animated Life.
Only three other animators have ever been tapped for an honorary award: Walter Lantz, Chuck Jones and Hayao Miyazaki, all titans of the field.
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Scott, 88, was nearly 40 when he made his directorial debut with 1977’s The Duellists, having spent his early career making high-end commercials in partnership with his brother Tony. But he has made up — and continues to make up — for lost time, consistently pumping out action-packed blockbusters (his films have collectively grossed some $5 billion), many of them landmarks of cinematic achievement.
Indeed, he is behind two of the most significant sci-fi films of all time, 1979’s Alien and 1982’s Blade Runner, as well as 1991’s Thelma & Louise (for which he received a best director Oscar nomination), 2000’s Gladiator (which won the best picture Oscar, while he lost best director), 2001’s Black Hawk Down (for which he received his most recent best director Oscar nom), 2007’s American Gangster, 2015’s The Martian and 2024’s Gladiator 2.
He has also produced many of his films — among them Thelma & Louise, Black Hawk Down, American Gangster, The Martian (for which he personally received a best picture Oscar nom) and Gladiator 2 — as well as a ton of TV series including The Good Wife, The Man in the High Castle, The Good Fight and Dope Thief.
Though he projects the image of the most masculine of males, and has featured tough-guy characters in films like Blade Runner and Gladiator, he is also behind truly feminist films like Alien and Thelma & Louise. His works collectively have been nominated for 45 Oscars (including seven for performances), winning nine (including one for a performance), but he has never taken home a statuette.
BAFTA awarded him with two high honors for career achievement: its Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema Award in 1994 (shared with Tony, who died in 2012) and its Fellowship in 2018.
[Listen to Scott’s 2015 interview on THR’s Awards Chatter podcast.]
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Vachon, 63, and Koffler, 60, are two of the most distinguished producers in the history of American independent film. In 1995, they founded the New York-based independent production company Killer Films, landmark releases of which have included all 10 feature-length films that have been directed by Todd Haynes — among them Poison (1991), Safe (1995), Far from Heaven (2002), I’m Not There (2007), Carol (2015) and 2023’s May December — as well as Larry Clark’s Kids (1995), Todd Solondz’s Happiness (1998), Kimberly Peirce’s Boys Don’t Cry (1999), John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer’s Still Alice (2014), Paul Schrader’s First Reformed (2017), Janicza Bravo’s Zola (2020) and Celine Song’s Past Lives (2023, for which Vachon and Koffler received their sole Oscar nomination, in the category of best picture).
Vachon, who is the more public-facing of the duo and has been nicknamed “the Queen of New Queer Cinema,” is such a fixture of the indie scene that she was cheekily but lovingly referenced alongside Spike Lee, Michael Moore and Richard Linklater in the title of the classic 1996 tome Spike, Mike, Slackers, & Dykes: A Guided Tour Across a Decade of American Independent Cinema. She is herself the author of two wonderful books about the biz, 1998’s Shooting to Kill and 2006’s A Killer Life, the latter of which she co-wrote with Austin Bunn and was chosen by a blue-ribbon panel organized by The Hollywood Reporter in 2023 as one of the 100 greatest film books of all time.
[Listen to Vachon’s 2023 interview on THR’s Awards Chatter podcast.]
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Earlier this month, THR published a piece suggesting 100 worthy candidates for Governors Awards. It included Close (#6), Scott (#8) and Vachon (#15).
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