LOS ANGELES _ Lily Tomlin has won some of the industry's biggest awards _ Emmys, Tonys, Grammys _ but at the SAG Awards, she's always come up short.
That will change in January, when she will receive the SAG Life Achievement Award. On Thursday, SAG-AFTRA said it would honor the 76-year-old at its 23rd annual show in 2017. Last year, the award went to Carol Burnett; other recent recipients include Rita Moreno, Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore.
"Lily Tomlin is an extraordinary actress, as equally adept at narrative drama as in comedy roles," SAG-AFTRA President Gabrielle Carteris said in a statement. "But it is through her many original characters that Lily's creative genius fully shines. She has an ability to create diverse and distinct characters that are at once familiar, eccentric and oh so honest _ in a way that illuminates life's hidden corners."
Tomlin was twice nominated for a SAG Award for her work on "The West Wing." In recent years, however, she has received a number of major awards, including the 2014 Kennedy Center Award and the 2003 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
The actress, who began her career on the sketch comedy show "Laugh-In," has starred in dozens of movies over the decades: Robert Altman's "Nashville"; "Nine to Five," with Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton; and "I Heart Huckabees," in which she was the subject of director David O. Russell's wrath. In 2015 _ the same year she starred in the critically acclaimed film "Grandma" _ she re-teamed with Fonda on the Netflix comedy "Grace and Frankie," which will soon enter its third season.
The SAG Awards will air on TBT and TBS on Jan. 29.
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