The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) has announced that Charles Durning, 84, will receive guild's Life Achievement Award at the 14th SAG Awards, to be held on Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008.
Durning, hardly a household name, is a somewhat curious choice, for the SAG Life Achievement Award — especially in the last few years — has usually gone to major film and/or television stars, e.g., Julie Andrews, Elizabeth Taylor, Angela Lansbury, Sidney Poitier, James Garner, Clint Eastwood, Shirley Temple.
Durning, whose acting career spans more than half a century, has appeared in nearly 100 films, from Harvey Middleman, Fireman, in 1965 all the way to this year's Polycarp.
He was nominated twice for a best supporting actor Oscar: The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), for his tap-dancing Texas governor, and Mel Brooks's To Be or Not To Be (1983), for his Nazi colonel.
Among Durning's other films are The Sting, The Muppet Movie, Tootsie, Home for the Holidays, The Hudsucker Proxy, Dick Tracy, and O Brother, Where Art Thou?.
Additionally, Durning has appeared on Broadway (That Championship Season, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) and in numerous television productions, perhaps most notably in the 1975 TV movie Queen of the Stardust Ballroom, opposite Maureen Stapleton. For that role, Durning received his first of eight Emmy nominations.
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