Iconic director Ridley Scott and eight-time Academy Award nominee Glenn Close are among the recipients of honorary Oscars, which will be handed out at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences’ Governors Awards later this year.
AMPAS announced the recipients on Wednesday. Legendary Disney animator Floyd Norman will also be awarded with an honorary Oscar, while indie producers Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler will receive the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. The awards will be presented on Sunday, Nov. 15, at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Ovation Hollywood in Los Angeles.
“The Academy’s Board of Governors is thrilled to present this year’s Governors Awards to five remarkable individuals whose groundbreaking work has forever shaped the art of filmmaking,” AMPAS President Lynette Howell Taylor said in a statement.
“Throughout her extraordinary body of work, Glenn Close’s unparalleled emotional range has brought to life some of the most complex characters in cinema. Floyd Norman is the legendary animator who has broken barriers and inspired generations of artists over his remarkable career,” Howell Taylor added. “Sir Ridley Scott is a true visionary whose decades-long legacy has left an immeasurable impact on global cinema and culture. Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler play a central role in American independent cinema, championing bold, ambitious and distinctive storytelling.”
The 2026 Academy Governors Awards will be handed out in a ceremony in November. Last year’s recipients were Tom Cruise, Debbie Allen, Wynn Thomas and Dolly Parton were last year’s recipients.
According to AMPAS, the honorary Academy Award, which is an Oscar statuette, is given “to honor extraordinary distinction in lifetime achievement, exceptional contributions to the state of motion picture arts and sciences in any discipline, or for outstanding service to the Academy.”
Glenn Close Was Nominated For Her First Oscar More Than 40 Years Ago
Glenn Close’s first Oscar nomination was for Best Supporting Actress for the 1982 drama The World According to Garp. Close was next nominated for supporting actress Oscars for 1983’s The Big Chill and 1984’s The Natural before receiving her first Best Actress nomination for 1987’s Fatal Attraction.
Close was then nominated for Best Actress Oscars for 1988’s Dangerous Liaisons, 2011’s Albert Nobbs and 2018’s The Wife, which was followed by another Best Supporting Actress nomination for Hillbilly Elegy. Her other film credits include Jagged Edge, Reversal of Fortune, 101 Dalmatians, 102 Dalmatians, Mars Attacks!, Air Force One, The Stepford Wives and Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.
Ridley Scott, meanwhile, has previously been nominated for four Oscars, for Best Director for 1991’s Thelma and Louise, 2000’s Gladiator and 2001’s Black Hawk Down. Scott was also nominated as one of the producers of the 2015 Best Picture Oscar nominee The Martian. Scott’s feature film debut as a director began in 1977 with the period war drama The Duellists, which was followed by the 1979 sci-fi horror classic Alien, which of course, spawned a film franchise.
Scott’s other credits as a director include Blade Runner, Legend, Black Rain, Hannibal, American Gangster, All the Money in the World and House of Gucci.
Floyd Norman became Disney’s first Black animator when he joined the studio in 1956. Norman’s first feature film with Disney was in the 1956 animated classic Sleeping Beauty, and he also worked on Sword in the Stone, Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book and Robin Hood, as well as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mulan, Toy Story 2 and Monsters, Inc.
Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler, who founded Killer Films in 1995, were previously nominated as producers of the 2024 Best Picture nominee Past Lives. Vachon and Koeffler’s producing credits include Hedwig and the Angry Inch, One Hour Photo, Camp, The Company, The Notorious Bettie Page, May December and Materialists.
The Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award was previously a bust statuette of Thalberg but is now an Oscar statuette. Per the Academy, the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award “is presented to a creative producer whose body of work reflects a consistently high quality of motion picture production.”
