Robert De Niro awarded Golden Globe

Robert De Niro will be honoured with the Cecil B DeMille Award for lifetime achievement at next year's Golden Globe Awards.

De Niro will receive the honour at the ceremony on January 16, the actor Kevin Spacey announced at a news conference.

De Niro has been nominated for eight Golden Globe Awards in both the comedy and drama categories, winning once for Raging Bull. He also has won two Academy Awards (for Raging Bull and The Godfather: Part II) and the Kennedy Center Honor.

Before announcing De Niro's name, Spacey - who has a gift for impersonations - gave a little clue about the winner's identity by imitating the bemused smirk that is De Niro's trademark. Spacey described him as being "universally acknowledged as one of the greatest actors of all time".

De Niro is also being hailed for his contributions as a director, as a producer through his Tribeca Productions, and as a co-founder of the Tribeca Film Festival, which was created to help revitalise lower Manhattan in New York after the September 11 2001 World Trade Center attacks.

Previous DeMille winners include Barbra Streisand, Al Pacino, Michael Douglas, Steven Spielberg and last year's recipient, De Niro's longstanding friend and director Martin Scorsese. Ricky Gervais is to return as the ceremony's host.

Philip Berk, president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association which presents the Globes, also announced that the broadcast will again be shown live coast-to-coast in the US from the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills.

© Press Association