Tomlin will accept the prize during the SAG Awards, which will air January 29 at 8 p.m. ET.
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“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.
The Screen Actors Guild has revealed that the actress will be the next recipient of its Life Achievement Award, given in recognition of career achievement and humanitarian accomplishment.
“But it is through her many original characters that Lily’s creative genius fully shines”.
It’s just the latest prize in a career that has brought Tomlin the Kennedy Center Honor, the Mark Twain Prize, two Tony Awards, a Grammy and six Emmys.
Along the way it has been given to such Hollywood legends as Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds, Paul Newman, Audrey Hepburn, Julie Andrews, Sidney Poitier, Angela Lansbury, Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore and Carol Burnett, among many others.
Tomlin, who last year scored a life achievement award from the Publicists Guild, was nominated for an Emmy last month for a second consecutive year for her role on Netflix’s comedy Grace And Frankie.
Although she earned her Oscar nomination for “Nashville”, Tomlin is best remembered on the big screen for her work with Fonda and Dolly Parton in “9 to 5”.
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She first came to prominence in the groundbreaking comedy series Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In in 1969, creating characters such as the overbearing and snorting switchboard operator Ernestine, the philosophical five-and-a-half-year-old Edith Ann and the tasteful suburban socialite Mrs. Audrey Earbore III.
