Glenn Close and Ridley Scott to get honorary Oscars at Governors Awards

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Glenn Close will get to hold an Oscar and make an acceptance speech Sunday night after coming to the brink of winning and walking away empty-handed eight times.

Long considered among the best actors to never win an Oscar, Close, 79, will get an honorary Academy Award for a stellar five-decade career at the annual Governors Awards at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Ovation Hollywood, the same complex that hosts the main ceremony.

Ridley Scott will also get an honorary Oscar. The 88-year-old director of “Alien,” “Blade Runner” and “Gladiator” has blended popular success and prestige like few others, but he has never won despite four nominations, including best director nods for “Thelma & Louise” and “Black Hawk Down.” He is not attending the ceremony and will accept via recorded video.

Disney animator Floyd Norman and Killer Films producers Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler will also be honored.

Close’s eight nominations tie her with Peter O’Toole for the most for an actor without a win.

The first of those came in 1983 for “The World According to Garp.” She was also nominated for her blockbuster turn as a rabbit-slaying stalker in 1987’s “Fatal Attraction,” and most recently for 2020’s “Hillbilly Elegy.”

“I got my first Oscar nomination 43 years ago,” Close told The Associated Press this week. “So it’s been a life, you know? And it’s overwhelming.”

She has won virtually every other major award, including three Emmys, three Tonys and three Golden Globes.

The Governors Awards often go to artists with extraordinary careers but no competitive Oscar. Tom Cruise, a recipient last year, is a case in point.

The name refers to the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The awards are chosen by a selection committee instead of the full Academy. The lifetime achievement honors used to be handed out during the Academy Awards, but since 2009 have had their own separate ceremony that is not televised.

Along with luminaries who worked with the honorees, the event has been increasingly packed with young stars as it became the unofficial kickoff to Hollywood’s award season campaigning.

Norman, 91, began his 65-year career in 1956 when he became the first Black animator for Walt Disney Animation Studios, contributing to “Sleeping Beauty,” “101 Dalmatians” and “The Jungle Book.” Decades later he worked on “Mulan,” “Toy Story 2” and “Monsters, Inc.”

“I still can’t believe it,” Norman told AP this week. “It’s mind-boggling. I’m certainly grateful and thankful. It’s the last thing I could ever have expected in a long, long career.”

Vachon and Koffler will receive the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, presented to “a creative producer whose body of work reflects a consistently high quality of motion picture production.”

They are the first female producing team and the first independent producers to receive it.

Vachon and Koffler co-founded the New York-based indie production hub Killer Films in 1995. Their credits as producers include “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” “One Hour Photo” and “May December.” Both were nominated for best picture Oscars for “Past Lives” in 2024.

Killer Films’ output includes “Velvet Goldmine,” “Happiness,” “Boys Don’t Cry,” “Far from Heaven” and “Carol.”