Last week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) announced the recipients of 2025’s “honorary” Oscars, which will be presented at the Governors Awards ceremony in November, a few months before the Academy Awards.
The awards at the ceremony fall into three categories: the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, given to someone “whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry”; the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, given to “a creative producer whose body of work reflects a consistently high quality of motion picture production”; and the Academy Honorary Award, given for “extraordinary lifetime achievement, exceptional contributions to the motion picture arts and sciences of any discipline, or outstanding service to the Academy.”
This year, the Academy his honoring Dolly Parton with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, while Tom Cruise, Debbie Allen and Wynn Thomas will receive Honorary Oscars. No one is slated to receive the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award at the November ceremony.
How is an ‘honorary’ Oscar different from a traditional one?
Honorary Oscars, as AMPAS points out, “have been presented since the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929.” They have been given out to recognize special achievements by those within the film industry, or those supporting or furthering the art of cinema.
These honorary awards were presented at the very same ceremony as the competitive awards through 2008. But they were moved over to their own separate ceremony in 2009, when the Board of Governors held their inaugural Governors Awards.
“The Governors Awards were established in effort to balance the desire to truly honor worthy individuals and avoid the time limitations that the Oscar telecast imposes on these honors,” reads an archived version of the Academy’s website.
Unlike the main Academy Awards, the recipients of the Governors Awards honors are not decided by the thousands of voting members of the Academy, but rather the AMPAS Board of Governors. This group currently includes 55 Governors, whose experiences range from front-of-camera work (Marlee Matlin, Lou Diamond Phillips) to the production and technical side (costume designer Ruth E. Carter, director Ava Duvernay, producer Jason Blum, etc.).
Despite being decided on by separate groups, the recipients of honorary Oscars are awarded the same Oscar statuette as those who win the competitive awards.
Who is eligible for an honorary Academy Award?
While there are few hard-and-fast restrictions on who can receive the Academy’s Honorary Award, it’s usually only given to a recipient who has not already won an Oscar.
“Except in extraordinary circumstances, no competitive Oscar winner may receive an Honorary Award,” reads a portion of the “About” section of its Governors Awards.
That doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. Several actors and filmmakers, including James Stewart, Federico Fellini and Sydney Poitier, were given honorary Oscars after having won their own statuettes decades prior.
The Jean Hersholt and Irving G. Thalberg awards don’t appear to have such strict restrictions, either. In 2010, for instance, Francis Ford Coppola was honored with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award after having won several Academy Awards in 1970s. And in 2013, Angelina Jolie was presented with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award over a decade after earning a Supporting Actress Oscar for “Girl, Interrupted.”
The Academy does, however, say that an honorary award cannot be “voted posthumously.” The members of the Board themselves are also ineligible to receive one.
When is the next Governors Awards ceremony?
The upcoming Governors Awards will be held on Nov. 19 at the Ray Dolby Ballroom in Hollywood, California. As is traditional, several figures from the film industry will be selected to present the awards and give tributes to this year’s recipients.
Clips from the Governors Awards are often played during the Oscars telecast, and the speeches are routinely made available on the Academy’s YouTube page after the event. But unfortunately, the Governors Awards is not a live televised event — a fact that some folks in the film industry have lamented for years.
Film journalist Daniel Joyaux is among those calling for better coverage of the Governors Awards, and more specifically, their return to the main Oscars telecast. Writing for RogerEbert.com in 2022, Joyaux argued that bringing the honorary awards back to the telecast could produce a few “viral moments” that would attract viewers who are otherwise disinterested in any Oscar-nominated films they hadn’t yet bothered to watch.
“In an era when the nominated films have an ever-decreasing cultural cachet, that slice of the zeitgeist pie can be at least partially reallocated with honorary awards that highlight movies (and movie history) that audiences still deeply care about,” Joyaux wrote.
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