You know how every once in a while you see a guy and think to yourself “That guy is all man”. Clint Eastwood is one, Charles Bronson was one… andJames Garnerranks right up there too. The Screen Actors Guild is giving Garner the lifetime achievement award this year, and very few deserve it as much as this guy. He’s always been underrated, often never noticed, but he puts on a damn good show when he’s on the screen and I for one am glad to see the man get his props. CNN gives us this:
Garner, 76, who built a career playing ruggedly charming, good-natured anti-heroes, will be presented with SAG’s annual lifetime achievement award at its gala awards show on February 5. The show is carried live on the cable channel TNT.
Garner, an Oklahoma native, entered show business in the 1950s after serving in the Korean War and gained fame on the TV western “Maverick.” He played the wise-cracking Bret Maverick, a gambler and ladies man, who got by on his wits rather than a sixgun and would just as soon duck a fight as face a showdown. He left the show in 1960 in a contract dispute with producers, but brought his “Maverick”-like alter ego to a series of films, including “Thrill of It All,” “Move Over, Darling,” “The Great Escape” and “Support Your Local Sheriff!”
Garner said his screen persona as a guy smart enough to steer clear of a fight ran only so deep. “At times it’s like me, but I used to have this temper. I used to get in a fight in a heartbeat. But that was many years ago,” he told Reuters. Garner had another prime-time hit as ex-con turned private detective Jim Rockford in “The Rockford Files,” which ran from 1974 until he abruptly quit the show in 1980. He reprised Rockford for several TV movies in the late 1990s.
If you’d like to read the whole article, go here. And oh yeah, if you haven’t seen Space Cowboys yet… go rent it tonight and enjoy.
