Sherry Lansing to receive Hersholt Humanitarian award

Dec 14, 2006 by Ian Evans

Sherry Lansing, the former chairman of Paramount Pictures Motion Picture Group, has been voted the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Academy President Sid Ganis announced today. The award, an Oscar® statuette, will be presented to Lansing during the 79th Academy Awards presentation on February 25, 2007.

The Hersholt Award is given to an individual in the motion picture industry whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry. “Sherry is being honored not only for her passionate work in support of fighting cancer,” said Ganis, “but because the Board recognized and remembered the long list of charitable organizations and causes she has served, and her long history in serving them. Sherry has earned enormous respect throughout the industry not only for her successful career as a producer and studio head, but because she has never failed to further devote her enormous energy to the needs of others.”

Lansing helped Dr. Armand Hammer form the nonprofit organization Stop Cancer and serves on its board. She is on the board of the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation, founded to honor excellence in basic and clinical science, and is a trustee of the American Association for Cancer Research.

In addition, she serves on the Citizens’ Oversight Committee of the California Institute for Stem Cell Research and on the American Red Cross Board of Governors Advisory Committee and is a trustee of the Carter Center, the human rights organization formed by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn. She also serves as a regent of the University of California.

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