2008 honorees are global voices whose achievements resonate in the arts, science and political arena. WILMINGTON, Del., March 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Four internationally renownedleaders and achievers will be honored for their lifetime accomplishmentswith the 29th annual Common Wealth Awards of Distinguished Service. Theseprestigious awards recognize individuals who have advanced and enrichedsociety through their life's work.
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(Biographies for each honoree are included with this release.) Glenn Close Glenn Close, the versatile and critically acclaimed star of the bigscreen, television and Broadway, wins the 2008 Common Wealth Award forDramatic Arts. The Emmy, Golden Globe and Tony Award-winning actress headlined herfirst television series as high-stakes litigator Patty Hewes in theoriginal legal thriller Damages for FX, which premiered in July 2007 andwill return for two more seasons. For her role, Ms. Close was just honoredwith the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Television Series Drama as wellas a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. Her return to FX followed herrave reviews and Emmy nomination for her portrayal of Captain MonicaRawling in a season-long story arc on the network's Emmy-winning series TheShield. Glenn Close made her feature film debut in The World According to Garp,earning awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and theNational Board of Review as well as an Academy Award nomination. She wassubsequently Oscar-nominated for her performances in The Big Chill, TheNatural, the smash hit Fatal Attraction, and Dangerous Liaisons. Close's other films include Jagged Edge, Reversal of Fortune, Hamlet,Meeting Venus, The Paper, 101 Dalmatians, 102 Dalmatians, Air Force One,Cookie's Fortune, The Safety of Objects, Le Divorce, Heights, Things YouCan Tell Just by Looking at Her, Nine Lives, and Evening. She has been nominated nine times for the Golden Globe Award, winningfor her performance in the television adaptation of The Lion in Winter(which also earned her a Screen Actors Guild Award) as well as for Damages. The latter is among the television projects that have brought her tenEmmy Award nominations, with a win for her portrayal of real-life heroMargarethe Cammermeyer in Serving in Silence: The Margarethe CammermeyerStory, which Close executive produced. Her other notable films for television include The Elephant Man,Something About Amelia, Stones for Ibarra and In the Gloaming. Sheexecutive produced and starred in the Sarah, Plain and Tall trilogy, TheBallad of Lucy Whipple, and the musical remake of South Pacific. Glenn Close made her professional theater and Broadway debut in Lovefor Love. Other early stage credits include The Crucifer of Blood and TheSingular Life of Albert Nobbs, for which she won an Obie Award. Close'sfirst Tony Award nomination came for her role in the musical Barnum, andshe subsequently won Tony Awards for her performances in The Real Thing andDeath and the Maiden. For her portrayal of Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musicalSunset Boulevard, Close won a Tony Award, a Drama Desk Award, a Los AngelesDrama Critics Circle Award and a Dramalogue Award. She would later reteamwith the show's director, Trevor Nunn, in London for his Royal NationalTheatre revival of A Streetcar Named Desire. She has been honored with a Crystal Award from Women in Film; a GLAADMedia Award; a People's Choice Award; the National Association of TheatreOwners' Female Star of the Year award at ShoWest and a Gotham Award for hercontributions to the New York independent filmmaking community. Close is a trustee emeritus of The Sundance Institute, with which shehas been associated for more than 17 years. She is also a trustee of TheWildlife Conservation Society and volunteers at Fountain House in New YorkCity, a facility dedicated to the recovery of men and women who suffer withmental illness. Close was born March 19, 1947 in Greenwich, Connecticut. She graduatedfrom the College of William and Mary with a degree in drama andanthropology. John Howard The Honorable John Winston Howard, 25th Prime Minister of Australia andrespected world leader, wins the 2008 Common Wealth Award for Government. Serving from March 1996 until November 2007, Howard has beenAustralia's second longest serving Prime Minister. He led the center/rightLiberal Party of Australia for a total of 16 years and was a member of theHouse of Representatives for 33 years. Prior to becoming Prime Minister,Mr. Howard had extensive senior experience in both government andopposition. He served as Treasurer (finance minister) in a previousgovernment and led his party in opposition for a number of years. A conservative on social policy, Mr. Howard pursued broadly pro-marketeconomic policies in his time as Prime Minister. During his period inoffice, Australia experienced continued economic growth averaging 3.6% perannum. The federal government budget of Australia was in heavy deficit whenMr. Howard's government came to power. That deficit was eliminated and 10of the 12 annual budgets produced by the Howard government during itsalmost 12 years of government were in surplus. In that time, $96 billion offederal government debt was repaid. The Australian government now has nonet debt. As well as fiscal consolidation, the Howard government undertook majorreform of the Australian taxation system through the introduction of agoods and services tax, which was accompanied by reductions in personalincome tax and corporate tax rates. He also substantially reformedAustralia's labor laws through a freer and less regulated labor market.Australia's unemployment rate is now at a 33-year low of 4.3%. In the field of foreign policy, Australia, under Mr. Howard'sgovernment, was both a strong and close ally of the United States as wellas expanding very extensive links with the nations of Asia. A particularfeature of the Howard government's time in power was the development of therelationship with China, which is now Australia's largest export market.Under John Howard's leadership, Australian forces joined the coalition ofthe willing in Iraq in March 2003. Some 1,400 Australian military personnelremain in the Iraqi theatre. Australia has strongly supported the waragainst terrorism with her forces continuing to serve alongside Americanand other coalition forces in Afghanistan. John Howard was in Washington on an official visit at the time of theterrorist attack on September 11, 2001. He addressed a joint sitting ofCongress in 2002. He currently serves as Chairman of the InternationalDemocratic Union -- an international grouping of center/right partiesincluding the Republican Party. Mr. Howard's government was also responsible for major reforms insocial policy, including measures to move people from welfare payments intopaid work, the involvement of faith-based and other non- governmentorganizations in the provision of certain welfare services and astrengthening of Australia's universal Medicare system. Shortly after Mr. Howard came to power, he responded to the massacre of35 people by a lone gunman at Port Arthur in Tasmania with theimplementation of national gun control laws, which drastically curtailedthe possession of many firearms. John Howard was born in Sydney, Australia, on July 26, 1939. Hegraduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Laws in 1961 andwas admitted as a Solicitor of the New South Wales Supreme Court in July1962. Prior to his election to Parliament, he was a partner in a Sydneyfirm of solicitors. Ann Curry Ann Curry, award-winning television journalist and news anchor, winsthe 2008 Common Wealth Award for Mass Communications. Curry was named co-anchor of Dateline NBC in May 2005 and news anchorfor NBC News' Today in March 1997. Curry has distinguished herself in global humanitarian reporting. FromMarch 2006 to March 2007, she traveled three times to Sudan to report onthe violence and ethnic cleansing taking place in Darfur and Chad. Whilethere, she provided in-depth reports focusing on the victims who have beencaught in the deadly conflict in that region, and she also conductedexclusive interviews with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and ChadianPresident Idrsiss Deby. In July 2006, Curry reported on the Israel-Lebanonwar, and she was one of the only American reporters to file stories on bothsides of the conflict from Beruit and Northern Israel. In the summer of 2005, Curry traveled with First Lady Laura Bushthroughout Africa to discuss issues that plague the continent such as theHIV/AIDS epidemic and women's rights and education. She was the firstnetwork news anchor to report from inside the tsunami zone in SoutheastAsia, filing live and taped reports from Sri Lanka for Dateline, Today andNBC Nightly News. She was also the first network news anchor to report onthe humanitarian refugee crisis caused by the genocide in Kosovo, reportingfor NBC News from Albania and Macedonia. In the first two weeks following the attacks of September 11, Curryreported live from ground zero every day. When the United States bombed AlQaeda targets in Afghanistan in November 2001, she reported extensivelyfrom the USS Theodore Roosevelt in the Arabian Sea and landed the firstexclusive interview with the war's military commander, General TommyFranks. Curry reported from Baghdad in the weeks leading up to the war inIraq and then from the USS Constellation as the war began, interviewingfighter pilots who flew the first wave of bombing runs over Iraq. She alsofiled reports from inside Iraq, from Qatar, and Kuwait during the firstweeks of the war. Curry first joined NBC News in August 1990 as a Chicago-basedcorrespondent. In 1992 she was named anchor of NBC News at Sunrise. Shelater helped launch MSNBC and then became news anchor at Today. Beforecoming to NBC, Ms. Curry was a reporter for KCBS in Los Angeles. In 1981,she was a reporter and anchor for KGW, the NBC affiliate in Portland,Oregon. Curry began her broadcasting career as an intern in 1978 at KTVL, inMedford Oregon, near her hometown, rising to become that station's firstfemale news reporter. Curry has earned two Emmys, four Golden Mikes, several Associated PressCertificates of Excellence, two Gracies, and an award for Excellence inReporting from the NAACP. In June 2007, she was honored with the SimonWiesenthal Medal of Valor for her reporting in Darfur. She has been awardedby Americares, the Anti-Defamation League as a Woman of Achievement, andthe Asian American Journalists Association, receiving its NationalJournalism Award in 2003. She has also won numerous awards for her charitywork, primarily for breast cancer research. Curry was born November 19, 1956 in Guam. She graduated from theUniversity of Oregon School of Journalism in 1978. James E. Hansen Dr. James Hansen, preeminent climate scientist, wins the 2008 CommonWealth Award for Science. He is director of the NASA Goddard Institute forSpace Studies in New York City and Adjunct Professor of Earth Sciences atColumbia University's Earth Institute. In his early research, Hansen used telescopic observations of Venus toextract detailed information on the physical properties of the cloud andhaze particles that veil Venus. Since the mid-1970s, Hansen has focused on studies and computersimulations of the Earth's climate for the purpose of understanding thehuman impact on global climate. He is best known for his testimony onclimate change to Congress in the 1980s that helped raise broad awarenessof the global warming issue. In recent years, Hansen has drawn attention to the danger of passingclimate tipping points, producing irreversible climate impacts that wouldyield a different planet from the one on which civilization developed.Hansen disputes the contention of fossil fuel interests and governmentsthat support them that it is an almost god-given fact that all fossil fuelsmust be burned with their combustion products discharged into theatmosphere. Instead, Hansen has outlined steps that are needed to stabilizeclimate, with a cleaner atmosphere and ocean, and he emphasizes the needfor the public to influence government and industry policies. Hansen was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1995. In2001, he received the Heinz Award for environment and the AmericanGeophysical Union's Roger Revelle Medal. Hansen received the World WildlifeFederation's Conservation Medal from the Duke of Edinburgh in 2006 and wasdesignated by Time magazine as one of the world's 100 most influentialpeople in 2006. In 2007 Hansen won the Dan David Prize in the field ofQuest for Energy, the Leo Szilard Award of the American Physical Societyfor Use of Physics for the Benefit of Society, and the American Associationfor the Advancement of Science Award for Scientific Freedom andResponsibility. Hansen was born March 29, 1941 in Denison, Iowa. He trained in physicsand astronomy in the space science program of Dr. James Van Allen at theUniversity of Iowa, receiving his bachelor's degree with highestdistinction in physics and mathematics, master's degree in astronomy, andPh.D. in physics in 1967. Hansen was a visiting student at the Institute of Astrophysics,University of Kyoto, and Department of Astronomy, Tokyo University, Japanfrom 1965-1966. He received his Ph.D. in physics from the University ofIowa in 1967. Except for 1969, when he was an NSF post-doctoral scientistat Leiden Observatory under Prof. H.C. van de Hulst, Hansen has spent hispost-doctoral career at NASA GISS.
