Glenn Close Honored with Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service

Four internationally renowned leaders and achievers will be honored for their lifetime accomplishments with the 29th annual Common Wealth Awards of Distinguished Service. These prestigious awards recognize individuals who have advanced and enriched society through their life's work. The 2008 Common Wealth Award winners are:

•  Glenn Close, celebrated actress of stage, screen and television, for Dramatic Arts
• John Howard, four-term prime minister of Australia, for Government
• Ann Curry, news anchor of NBC's Today, co-anchor of Dateline NBC, for Mass Communications
• James Hansen, preeminent climate scientist, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, for Science.

The honorees will receive a shared prize of $200,000 at the Common Wealth Awards ceremony, hosted by PNC Bank, Delaware, April 5 at the Hotel du Pont in Wilmington. The Common Wealth Awards of Distinguished Service were first presented in 1979 by The Common Wealth Trust, created under the will of the late Ralph Hayes, an influential business executive and philanthropist.

In their 29-year history, The Common Wealth Awards have conferred $4.4 million in prize money to 165 honorees of international renown. The awards are funded by The Common Wealth Trust.

Glenn Close, the versatile and critically acclaimed star of the big screen, television and Broadway, wins the 2008 Common Wealth Award for Dramatic Arts. The Emmy, Golden Globe and Tony Award-winning actress headlined her first television series as high-stakes litigator Patty Hewes in the original legal thriller "Damages" for FX, which premiered in July 2007 and will return for two more seasons. For her role, Ms. Close was just honored with the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Television Series Drama as well as a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. Her return to FX followed her rave reviews and Emmy nomination for her portrayal of Captain Monica Rawling in a season-long story arc on the network's Emmy-winning series "The Shield." Glenn Close made her feature film debut in The World According to Garp, earning awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Board of Review as well as an Academy Award nomination. She was subsequently Oscar-nominated for her performances in The Big Chill, The Natural, the smash hit Fatal Attraction, and Dangerous Liaisons. Close's other films include Jagged Edge, Reversal of Fortune, Hamlet, Meeting Venus, The Paper, 101 Dalmatians, 102 Dalmatians, Air Force One, Cookie's Fortune, The Safety of Objects, Le Divorce, Heights, Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her, Nine Lives, and Evening. She has been nominated nine times for the Golden Globe Award, winning for her performance in the television adaptation of "The Lion in Winter" (which also earned her a Screen Actors Guild Award) as well as for "Damages." Glenn Close made her professional theater and Broadway debut in Love for Love. Other early stage credits include The Crucifer of Blood and The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs, for which she won an Obie Award. Close's first Tony Award nomination came for her role in the musical Barnum, and she subsequently won Tony Awards for her performances in The Real Thing and Death and the Maiden. For her portrayal of Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Sunset Boulevard, Close won a Tony Award, a Drama Desk Award, a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award and a Dramalogue Award. She would later reteam with the show's director, Trevor Nunn, in London for his Royal National Theatre revival of A Streetcar Named Desire. She has been honored with a Crystal Award from Women in Film; a GLAAD Media Award; a People's Choice Award; the National Association of Theatre Owners' Female Star of the Year award at ShoWest and a Gotham Award for her contributions to the New York independent filmmaking community.

Glenn Close