The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which hands out the Golden Globes, said Allen’s contributions to filmmaking had been phenomenal and he was truly an international treasure. The HFPA President, Theo Kingma, said “There is no one more worthy of this award than Woody Allen.”
Allen, who’s 77, has averaged about a film every year of a career that’s approaching 50 years. After building a reputation with early films such as Annie Hall and Play it Again Sam, he went through a period where he struggled to find financing and distribution for his films in the United States, but in recent years, with films such as Match Point, Vicky Cristina Barcelona and the Oscar-winning Midnight In Paris, there’s a perception within the industry that Allen has returned to form.
His next film, Blue Jasmine, starring Cate Blanchett as the wife of a Bernie-Madoff-style crook, is released in the UK later this month.
Previous winners of the HFPA’s Cecil B DeMille award include Morgan Freeman, Robert De Niro, Stephen Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Jody Foster, who last year, used her acceptance speech to be more open than ever about her sexuality and to suggest that she was quitting directing.