George Clooney to receive Golden Globes' Cecil B. DeMille award

Clooney, 53, one of Hollywood’s leading men on screen and behind the camera, will be honored in January at the Golden Globes Awards, one of the year’s most high-profile awards ceremonies for film and television organized by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

Theo Kingma, the association’s president, said the award was for Clooney’s “outstanding contributions both in front of and behind the camera.”

Clooney is a two-time Oscar winner, as supporting actor in “Syriana” and as a producer of the 2013 best motion picture “Argo.” He has also won three Golden Globes, including best actor in a motion picture for “The Descendants” in 2012 and “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” in 2001.

This year, he released his fifth film as director, the World War Two drama “The Monuments Men,” and he recently signed to direct Sony Pictures’ “Hack Attack,” about the phone hacking scandal that ensnared British politicians and media figures.

News of the Cecil B. DeMille award comes as Clooney prepares to wed his fiancee, lawyer Amal Alamuddin, in Venice in late September.

The award is named after the influential Hollywood director who spanned both the silent and sound eras of film. Last year, it was awarded to prolific director Woody Allen, who in keeping with his custom to not attend awards shows sent actress Diane Keaton to pick up the accolade.

Recent winners include actors Jodie Foster, Morgan Freeman and Robert De Niro, and directors Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese.