Cecil B. DeMille Award

The Cecil B. DeMille Award is a prestigious accolade conferred by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) as an honorary Golden Globe award to film personalities for making remarkable contributions to the film industry. The award is not given for a specific work but is presented to celebrate lifetime achievement of an individual who have thrived in making a lasting impact on the cinematic world. It marks as a symbol of pride for the recipient, who can be an actor, director, producer, writer or any individual from the film fraternity.

This honorary award was introduced by the Hollywood Foreign Correspondent Association (HFCA), predecessor of the HFPA. Legendary American filmmaker and actor Cecil B. DeMille became first recipient of the award at the 9th Golden Globe Awards ceremony in 1952. The award was named after him as the Cecil B. DeMille Award. The association selected the ace producer-director, considered a founding father of American cinema, because of his influential works and repute in the industry that earned him international fame.

Recipient of the Cecil B. DeMille Award is selected annually by the board of directors of the HFPA from a diverse range of film professionals starting from actors, entertainers, directors, producers, writers and film executives among others. Some notable recipients of the award include luminaries like Walt Disney, Gregory Peck, Frank Sinatra, Alfred Hitchcock, Bette Davis, Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, Sean Connery, Harrison Ford, Anthony Hopkins, Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks.

American actress and singer Judy Garland became the youngest and first female honoree of the award, receiving it in 1962 when she was 39 years old; while Polish-born American film producer Samuel Goldwyn, at age 93, became the oldest recipient of the award being honored with it in 1973. Bahamian and American actor, film director, and diplomat Sidney Poitier holds the record of being the first African-American who received the honor, garnering it in 1982; and after over three decades in 2018, acclaimed American talk show host, actress, television producer, author, and media proprietor Oprah Winfrey became the first African-American woman to achieve such feat.

The award was not presented in 1976. HFPA refrained from conducting the traditional Golden Globe Awards ceremony in 2008 and instead announced name of recipients of awards in different categories in a press conference at The Beverly Hilton because of the then ongoing 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike. Distinguished American film director, producer and screenwriter Steven Spielberg was selected as honoree of the Cecil B. DeMille Award that year, however as the ceremony was cancelled, HFPA bestowed the accolade to Spielberg during the next annual ceremony in 2009. The award was also not presented in 2022, a year that marked boycott of the Golden Globes by different media houses, actors, and others associated with showbiz in protest of lack of the association’s action in increasing its membership diversity leading the ceremony’s broadcaster NBC to refuse to broadcast it making it the first Golden Globes event after 2008 that was not televised.

List of Winners