The Houston Film Critics Society has selected Jeff Bridges to receive its Lifetime Achievement Award for an extraordinary body of work that spans 60 years, Nick Nicholson, HFCS president, announced.
“We are happy to honor the lifetime of remarkable film acting that Jeff Bridges has graced us with in a career that spans six decades,” Nicholson said.
Bridges, who won an Academy Award for best actor in 2010 for his performance as a down-and-out country singer in Crazy Heart, has received five other Oscar nominations ranging from a happy-go-lucky bank robber (alongside Clint Eastwood) in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) to an awkward alien in Star Man (1984), from a food-obsessed U.S. President in The Contender (2000) to a one-eyed, alcoholic marshal in the Coen Brothers remake of True Grit.
His other best known (and best loved) roles include the Dude in The Big Lebowski (1998), a struggling musician in The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989) and as a video game programmer in the sci-fi film TRON (1982).
Born into a family of actors, Bridges first appeared on screen in 1951 (he was two) in The Company She Keeps, a film that starred his mother, Dorothy Dean Bridges. His older brother Beau was also in it. Both boys also appeared as children on occasion in the popular television series Sea Hunt, which starred their father, Lloyd Bridges.
His star-making role came in 1971’s Texas-themed The Last Picture Show, based on a novel by Larry McMurtry. Bridges received his first Oscar nomination for the movie. Since then, Bridges has acted steadily, playing a wide variety of roles.
“There is an amazing naturalness to his performances,” said Nicholson. “Evidence of his artistry and his dedication to his craft is that he makes it all look easy.”
The Houston Film Critics Society will present the award at its annual awards gala, which will be held Saturday Jan. 7, 2012 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Brown Auditorium. The HFCS will honor top achievements in film during 2011 at the event and also present two special awards – Bridges’ award for lifetime achievement and another special humanitarian award that will be given to Joanne King Herring.
Previous winners of the HFCS’s Lifetime Achievement Award were Sissy Spacek in 2010 and the late Patrick Swayze in 2009.
Founded in 2007, the Houston Film Critics Society is a not-for-profit organization of 26 print, broadcast and Internet film critics based in the Greater Metropolitan Houston area. Its membership includes critics not only from all of the major Houston-area outlets but also from national publications and websites and respected Hollywood trade publications.