(Reuters) – Oscars season kicked off on Thursday as actors Angelina Jolie, Angela Lansbury, Steve Martin and Italian costume designer Piero Tosi were the first to receive honorary Governors Awards, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences said.
The Governors Awards are an Oscar statuettes given to those in film that have made significant contributions to the industry through their body of work. They will be presented at a ceremony in Hollywood on November 16.
Jolie, 38, is the youngest of the four recipients, and is being honored for her career, including her Oscar-winning role in 1999’s “Girl, Interrupted,” her directorial debut with 2011’s “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” and her humanitarian work.
Comedic actor and three-time Oscar host Martin, 68, has a long-standing career playing witty or dim characters in comedy films such as 1979’s “The Jerk,” “The Pink Panther” series and 2005’s “Shopgirl.”
Despite a career spanning 60 years, Martin has never received an Oscar nomination. The actor tweeted on Thursday that he was “proud to win an honorary Oscar this year. A salute to comedy and all the great people I’ve worked with.”
Lansbury, 87, is a three-time Oscar nominee for her roles in 1944’s “Gaslight,” 1945’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and 1962’s “The Manchurian Candidate.” She is also widely known for her role as fictional writer-sleuth Jessica Fletcher in television series “Murder, She Wrote.”
Five time Oscar-nominated costume designer Tosi, 86, garnered recognition for his work on Italian director Luchino Visconti’s films such as 1957’s “White Nights” and for 1963’s “The Leopard” and 1971’s “Death in Venice.”
The honorary Governors Awards are presented ahead of the Academy Awards, which will close out the Hollywood awards season on March 2, 2014.
(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Eric Kelsey and Stacey Joyce)