Movie star Javier Bardem will receive a lifetime achievement award at Spain’s San Sebastian film festival, organizers said Friday. The 54-year-old, the first Spanish actor to win an Oscar, will collect the Donostia award at the opening gala on September 22, a statement said. His image will also feature on the poster of this year’s festival.

The organizers praised Bardem for his “ability to slip into another’s skin as he morphs into his characters”, and a career that has gone from “strength to strength”.

Bardem won the best supporting actor award in 2008 for his chilling portrait of a psychopathic killer with a strange haircut in “No Country For Old Men”. He also portrayed gay Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas in the 2000 biopic “Before Night Falls”, and played the villain in the 2012 James Bond movie “Skyfall”.

Past recipients of the Donostia award - the festival’s highest honor - include Meryl Streep, Richard Gere and Robert De Niro.

The festival was originally intended to honor Spanish language films but has established itself as one of the world’s top movie festivals. It hosted the world premiere of Alfred Hitchcock’s spy thriller North by Northwest in 1959 and Woody Allen’s Melinda and Melinda in 2004. — AFP

In this file photo Spanish actor Javier Bardem (left) hands the 58th San Sebastian International Film Festival's Donostia Award to US actress Julia Roberts in the northern Spanish Basque city of San Sebastian.