Christopher Plummer Receives Lifetime Achievement Award From Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival

Award winning actor Christopher Plummer was honored on Saturday, January 24 with a Lifetime Achievement Award given to him by the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival and Florida Atlantic University at Cinema Paradiso in Fort Lauderdale.

The night began with a film screening of "The Wind Across the Everglades," where Plummer starred in his second film in 1958 as Walt Murdock, a 19th-century Florida game warden who declares war on local bird poachers in the Everglades in early Miami, Florida.

The DeSantis Center for Motion Picture Industry Studies at FAU's Barry Kaye College of Business and FLIFF presented the film, with a brief introduction on the background of the film presented by Foster Hirsch, a professor of film at Brooklyn College and author of sixteen books on film and theater.

Hirsch then went on to introduce Plummer and mediate a Bravo Network's Inside the Actors Studio style Q&A with the actor. Hirsch and Plummer discussed his career and the different aspects of various films and co-stars.

Plummer brought laughs to the crowd after Hirsch asked him, "Does it disturb you at all that the film (Sound of Music) is so popular and 50 years from now your name will still be associated with it -- you might be remembered above all for the Sound of Music?" to which Plummer adamantly replied, "Yes, it pisses me off!!"

Plummer spoke candidly about his decade-spanning career, which includes more than 100 feature films and working as a leading actor in several of the world's most important theatre companies.

Guests were treated to a brief show of clips documenting Plummer's career which included such movies as "Fall of the Roman Empire," "The Sound of Music," "Inside Daisy Clover," "The Man Who Would Be King," "Somewhere in Time," "Delores Claiborne" and "The Insider."

Mary Osceola-Moore, a co-star in the film and local member of the Seminole Indian tribe, also presented Plummer with several gifts including a handmade Seminole jacket to thank him for his contributions to South Florida.

After the award, Plummer held a book signing where guests were able to meet Plummer, take his picture and have his new autobiography signed, In Spite of Myself: A Memoir.

Plummer is currently working on a new animated sci-fi flick directed by Tim Burton and Shane Acker, "9" which will be released in 2009.