Winters: An Award For A Lifetime

Actress Shelley Winters already has two Oscars to her credit. But that was nothing compared to the outpouring of love she received Monday night from her friends and colleagues in Hollywood.

Winters received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the second annual Hollywood Film Festival, an honor 50 years and 100 movies in the making, reports CBS 'This Morning' Co-Anchor Mark McEwen.

When she heard she was to be honored, Winters says, "I wondered why. And then I had to sit down and add up the good pictures I've been in. I've been in many films. I was under contract for seven years, and I did 35 movies in those seven years. I don't know how."

Winters, who will turn 76 on Aug. 18, won Academy Awards for her performances in A Patch of Blue (1965) and The Diary of Anne Frank (1959). She also was nominated for an Oscar for The Poseidon Adventure (1972).

Her other film credits include A Double Life (1947), A Place in the Sun (1951), The Night of the Hunter (1955), Lolita (1962), Alfie (1966), Bloody Mama (1970), Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976), Delta Force (1986), and Jury Duty (1995).

She also made occasional guest appearances on the TV sitcom Roseanne, playing the free-spirited grandmother of the title character.

McEwen says that, in her performances, the actress "has always walked a fine line between brute strength and heartbreaking sensitivity."

Among those on hand to honor her Monday night was actor Rod Steiger, who said of her, "She's that kind of primitive 'everyperson.' You're her. You can be her. She belongs. She's one of the people."

Actress Lesley Anne Warren says she particularly admires Winters because of "her ability to embody the kinds of roles and the diversity of roles that she has tackled."

Winters herself says her best quality on the big screen is honesty.

"I think I'm real," she says. "I think I reflect life. And I enjoy hearing that people enjoy me. That's the real honor."

Her life offscreen has been amply documented by Winters herself in two candid memoirs, Shelley, Also Known as Shirley (1981) and Shelley II: The Middle of My Century (1989).

Her three marriages have included unions with Italian actor-director Vittorio Gassman (to whom she was wed from 1952 to 1954) and actor Anthony Franciosa (wed from 1957 to 1960). In her memoirs, she also claimed to have had affairs with such screen legends as Errol Flynn, William Holden, and Burt Lancaster.

Winters has a daughter from her marriage to Gassman.