Steve Martin To Receive AFI Life Achievement Award

Steve Martin is about to join an elite club as the 43rd person to be honored with the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award.

“Steve Martin is an American original,” Sir Howard Stringer, chairman of AFI’s board of trustees, said in a statement released Friday. “From a wild and crazy stand-up comic to one who stands tall among the great figures in this American art form, he is a multi-layered creative force bound by neither convention nor caution. His work is defined by him alone, for he is the author – and a national treasure whose work has stuck with us like an arrow in the head.”

The honor will be bestowed on June 4, 2015 in Los Angeles, in a tribute event to be broadcast on TNT and Turner Classic Movies.

Martin started his long career as a writer, including an Emmy-winning stint on “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” in the 1960s before becoming a celebrated frequent guest on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.” It was on “SNL” that Martin became famous for his “Two Wild and Crazy Guys” sketch with Dan Aykroyd.

But according to Entertainment Weekly , before all of that heady success, Steve Martin’s very first job was as a magician at Disneyland.

He would later go on to enjoy a long and fruitful film career, including “Three Amigos” (1986), “Roxanne” (1987), “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” (1987), “Father of the Bride” (1991), and “Cheaper by the Dozen” (2003).

Martin has also hosted the Academy Awards ceremony three times, most recently in 2010 along with Alex Baldwin.

The first AFI Life Achievement Award recipient was legendary director John Ford in 1973. More recently, Al Pacino, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, Shirley MacLaine, Mel Brooks, and Jane Fonda have been honored by the AFI.

This isn’t the first such honor for Steve Martin; in 2005, he received the Mark Twain Prize for Humor, was part of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2007, and in 2013 earned an honorary Academy Award.

[photo credit: Joella Marano]

Steve Martin To Receive AFI Life Achievement Award