Jack Lemmon was American actor of the stage and screen. He has earned numerous accolades including two Academy Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, three BAFTA Awards, and five Golden Globe Awards. He also earned the Berlin Film Festival's Silver Bear for Best Actor, the Cannes Film Festival's Award for Best Actor and the Venice International Film Festival's Volpi Cup for Best Actor.
Lemmon played a morale officer in the comedy-drama Mister Roberts (1955) earning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He played a man pretending to be a woman in the comedy film Some Like it Hot (1959), an insurance clerk looking for love in the romance drama The Apartment (1960), and a businessman looking for the remains of his father in Avanti! (1972), all of which earned him three Golden Globe Awards for Best Actor in a Motion Picture â Musical or Comedy. For playing a troubled businessman facing a moral and emotional crisis in the drama Save the Tiger (1973) he won the Academy Award for Best Actor as well as nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture â Drama.
He was further nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayals of an executive who struggles with alcoholism in the Blake Edwards drama Days of Wine and Roses (1962), a shift supervisor at a nuclear power plant in the James Bridges drama The China Syndrome (1979), a charismatic but self-absorbed Broadway press agent who is terminally ill in the Bob Clark comedy-drama Tribute (1980), and conservative American businessman who travels in search of his missing son in the drama Costa-Gavras Missing (1982).
For his work in television he received six Primetime Emmy Award nominations winning twice for Outstanding Variety Program for Jack Lemmon in 'S Wonderful, 'S Marvelous, 'S Gers (1972) and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for playing an elderly man in Tuesdays with Morrie (1999). He was Emmy-nominated for his roles in The Entertainer (1976), The Murder of Mary Phagan (1988), 12 Angry Men (1997), and Inherit the Wind (1999). On the Broadway stage, Lemmon played Scottie Templeton in the Bernard Slade play Tribute (1979), and James Tyrone Sr. in the Eugene O'Neill play Long Day's Journey into Night (1986) earning nominations for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play.
Over his career Lemmon has received various honors including a Motion Picture Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1990, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 1990, and the Berlin International Film Festival's Honorary Golden Bear in 1996. He was also honored with the Kennedy Center Honors at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1996.