Character actor cast in role of a lifetime

Character actor extraordinaire Charles Durning will add yet another award to a lifetime of achievement.

The actor who has worked on close to 100 feature films in his fifty-plus-year career will receive the 2007 Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award for "career achievement and humanitarian accomplishment."

Durning will receive the award at the 14th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards, which premieres live on TNT and TBS on Sunday, Jan 27.

Durning's films credits include "When a Stranger Calls," "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" (for which he received an Oscar nod), "The Muppet Movie" and "Tootsie."

He has been nominated for four Golden Globes and two Oscars. He has earned eight Emmy nominations and has won both Tony and Drama Desk awards for this portrayal role of Big Daddy in the 1990 Broadway revival of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" with Kathleen Turner.

Durning is also a decorated war hero, having earned three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star for valor during World War II. He was in the first wave to land on Omaha Beach during the D-Day Normandy invasion in June 6, 1944 where he killed seven German gunners and suffered machine gun wounds to his right leg and shrapnel wounds over his body. He was later stabbed eight times with a bayonet by a German soldier that he killed with a rock in hand to hand combat.

Though Durning did not talk about these experiences until the 50th anniversary of D-Day, it was partially because of those dark experiences that he came to acting.

He employed dance speech and acting studies as part of his post-war recovery.