Spanish actor Javier Bardem to get lifetime achievement award at San Sebastian film fest

In this file photo taken on May 28, 2022, Spanish actor Javier Bardem arrives for the closing ceremony of the 75th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France. The San Sebastian Festival will fete Javier Bardem with its prestigious Donostia Award in its 71st edition, which will be held from Sept. 22 to 30, as announced by the festival on May 12, 2023, during the presentation of the official poster of the festival that this year will feature an image of Bardem. LOIC VENANCE / AFP

MADRID, Spain—Movie star Javier Bardem will receive a lifetime achievement award at Spain’s San Sebastian film festival, organizers said Friday, May 12.

The 54-year-old, the first Spanish actor to win an Oscar, will collect the Donostia award at the opening gala on Sept. 22, a statement said.

His image will also feature on the poster of this year’s festival.

The organizers praised Bardem for his “ability to slip into another’s skin as he morphs into his characters,” and a career that has gone from “strength to strength.”

Bardem won the best supporting actor award in 2008 for his chilling portrait of a psychopathic killer with a strange haircut in “No Country for Old Men.”

He also portrayed gay Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas in the 2000 biopic “Before Night Falls,” and played the villain in the 2012 James Bond movie “Skyfall.”

Past recipients of the Donostia award—the festival’s highest honor—include Meryl Streep, Richard Gere and Robert De Niro.

The festival was originally intended to honor Spanish-language films, but has established itself as one of the world’s top movie festivals.

It hosted the world premiere of Alfred Hitchcock’s spy thriller North by Northwest in 1959 and Woody Allen’s Melinda and Melinda in 2004.  /ra

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