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Curtain Call: The Julie Harris Award for Lifetime Achievement
It’s not too late to grab tickets for this weekend’s Tony Awards Party at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles, which will honor the incredible actor Hal Holbrook with The Actors Fund‘s Julie Harris Award for Lifetime Achievement. The gathering not only features the official Tony live feed–of course!–but also a special program hosted by Marilu Henner and featuring Sean Penn, who will present Mr. Holbrook with his award.
Be sure to view Marilu Henner’s appearance on Good Day LA, during which she talked up the Tony Party (skip to 2:10 to hear her promo The Fund!), and check out these photos of previous Julie Harris Award honorees from our archives.
2006 Julie Harris Award Winner Liza Minnelli
2005 Julie Harris Award Winner Stockard Channing (with Joanne Worley, Elaine Stritch and Jason Graee)
2004 Julie Harris Award Winner James Earl Jones (with Henry Winkler, Joanne Worley and Jason Alexander)
2009 Julie Harris Award Winner Chita Rivera (with daughter Lisa Mordente and Tippi Hedren)
2008 Julie Harris Award Winner Tommy Tune (with Carol Channing and Florence Henderson)
2010 Julie Harris Award Winner Brian Stokes Mitchell (with Annette Bening and Tommy Tune). Credit Bill Dow.
2007 Julie Harris Award Winner Jerry Herman, right (with composer and lyricist Jeff Marx, left)
Five Questions For: Hal Holbrook
On June 12, 2011, The Actors Fund’s Annual Tony Awards® Viewing Party returns to celebrate its 15th year of bringing the excitement of Broadway’s biggest night to our friends in Los Angeles. Hosted by Marilu Henner, this year’s gathering will honor the astonishingly talented Hal Holbrook with The Fund’s Julie Harris Award for Lifetime Achievement, which will be presented by Sean Penn, writer and director of Into the Wild, for which Holbrook earned his most recent Academy Award nomination. In advance of the festivities, Mr. Holbrook has graciously taken the time to answer a few of our questions.
Actors Fund: What does it mean to be receiving The Julie Harris Award for Lifetime Achievement?
Hal Holbrook: There is no recognition that means more to me than what I get from my fellow actors. I prize this profession above all others and the actors in it, and Julie Harris is a rare diamond among us.
AF: You’ve appeared in countless productions and have touched the lives of so many people. Why do you think an organization like The Actors Fund is such an important part of the industry?
Holbrook: Very few actors can build the financial resources for disasters or support in their elder years that people in other high profile professions are able to do. We have to take care of our own. They are family.
AF: You’ve also received an amazing array of awards, but many people say their favorite Hal Holbrook performance is your one-man play Mark Twain Tonight, for which you won a Tony. I’m sure you know that Mark Twain supported The Fund, too, most famously opening the 1907 The Actors Fund Fair at The Metropolitan Opera House. If you had the chance to sit down and discuss the industry with him today, what do you think he’d say?
Holbrook: I think Mark Twain would reiterate some of the things he said so eloquently about the service that an actor performs for the public heart and mind. As he did in the thunderous blast at a Brooklyn pastor who refused burial to a revered member of The Players Club. He fried the preacher in oil.
AF: Looking back, are there any other projects you’ve done that stand out as favorites?
Holbrook: My answer is yes. The Senator, Commander Bucher in Pueblo, Lincoln, King Lear, Shylock and anything I did with Dixie.
AF: You’ve just appeared in Water for Elephants, and have a few things in the works like Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln. What’s next for you?
Holbrook: My answer is this: Who knows?
Follow the link for more information and tickets to The Actors Fund Annual Tony® Viewing Party.
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