Curated playlist
AFI Life Achievement Award recipients
- Alfred HitchcockAt age five, Alfred Hitchcock was sent to a police station with a note and locked in a cell.
- Martin ScorseseMartin Scorsese's love of movies began because asthma kept him out of games.
- Al PacinoAl Pacino's mother told him poor people don't do acting. He went on to earn nine Oscar nominations.
- Orson WellesOrson Welles burned ten reels of his own Don Quixote film. He felt the 1969 Moon landings made its ending obsolete.
- Steven SpielbergSteven Spielberg walked into Universal Studios without a pass, and the guard waved him in.
- George LucasGeorge Lucas turned down a higher directing fee for Star Wars. He asked for toy and merchandise rights instead.
- James StewartJames Stewart gave his Oscar to his father for the shop window.
- Meryl StreepDino De Laurentiis insulted Meryl Streep in Italian, not knowing she spoke it. She answered him in Italian too.
- Kirk DouglasKirk Douglas insisted on giving blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo an on-screen credit for Spartacus.
- Elizabeth TaylorAfter Rock Hudson said he was dying of AIDS, Elizabeth Taylor helped found a research foundation in 1985.
- Harrison FordHarrison Ford got Han Solo after reading lines for other actors' auditions. George Lucas slowly decided he wanted Ford.
- Mel BrooksMel Brooks was 14 years old when he climbed onto a diving board at the Butler Lodge, a second-rate hotel in the Borscht Belt. He worked there as a pool-side tummler, an entertainer hired to keep the guests amused. On this day he wore a…
- Jack NicholsonJack Nicholson improvised one line in the 1980 horror film The Shining, and it was not in the script.
- Clint EastwoodPresident Reagan quoted Clint Eastwood's line "Go ahead, make my day" to Congress.
- Bette DavisBette Davis's tombstone reads, "She did it the hard way." A director suggested the epitaph after All About Eve.
- Michael DouglasMichael Douglas won a Best Picture Oscar before he was a star. He produced One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
- Tom HanksTom Hanks lost 35 pounds to play a dying lawyer in Philadelphia. He thinned his hair and learned to walk differently.
- William WylerDirector William Wyler once made Henry Fonda do forty takes of one scene. His only note was the word again.
- Denzel WashingtonIn 2025, on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the actor Denzel Washington said that the emphasis in his first name belongs on the first syllable. His mother had moved it to the second syllable so that young Denzel would answer to her call and not his…
- Jane FondaJane Fonda sat on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun during a 1972 visit to Hanoi, and a photograph of that moment outraged a large number of Americans. It earned her a nickname that has followed her for decades: Hanoi Jane. For many…
- John WilliamsSteven Spielberg laughed at John Williams's two-note Jaws theme, thinking it was a joke.
- George ClooneyIn 1977, a teenage George Clooney tried out for the Cincinnati Reds and did not make it past the first round of player cuts. No contract was offered. Clooney, an American actor and filmmaker, would go on to collect two Academy Awards, a…
- Morgan FreemanIn January 2010, Morgan Freeman became the voice that opened the CBS Evening News, replacing Walter Cronkite in that spot. The network said it wanted consistency across the introductions to its regular news broadcasts and special reports.…
- David LeanFilm critics spent two hours tearing apart David Lean's Ryan's Daughter to his face at a New York lunch.
- Barbra StreisandBarbra Streisand once filed a lawsuit that sent a crowd of strangers to look at a single photograph. In 2003 she claimed that a website documenting coastal erosion had invaded her privacy. Among its more than 12,000 images, one happened to…
- Sean ConnerySir Sean Connery was the first actor to play James Bond in the cinema, and the role followed him for the rest of his life. In 2009, he described a taxi ride during the Edinburgh Film Festival. The driver was amazed that Connery could name…
- Diane KeatonDiane Keaton was born Diane Hall, but she gave up that surname before her career took off, because another actress was already registered under it. She chose her mother's maiden name instead. The new name would be credited in films across…