MUMBAI: The winners of the 2008 Directors Guild of America Outstanding Directorial Achievement Awards and the recipients of the Guild’s 2009 Career Achievement Awards were announced during the 61st Annual DGA Awards Dinner at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles.
Danny Boyle won the DGA’s Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for Slumdog Millionaire. This is Boyle’s first DGA Feature Film Award.
Following the welcome by DGA President Michael Apted to an audience of more than 1,500 guests, actor/comedian Jon Cryer (Two and a Half Men) hosted the ceremony.
Presenters included: Amy Adams and Viola Davis, Christian Bale, Josh Brolin and Sean Penn, DGA Secretary/Treasurer Gil Cates, Claire Danes, Lisa Edelstein, Jodie Foster, Rachel Griffiths, Richard Jenkins, Taraji P. Henson, Frank Langella and Michael Sheen, Melissa Leo, Michelle Monaghan, Dev Patel and Freida Pinto, Michael Shannon, DGA National vice president Steven Soderbergh, Marisa Tome, Blair Underwood, and 2007 DGA Feature Film Award winners Joel and Ethan Coen.
The DGA’s Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film has traditionally served as a near-perfect barometer for the Academy Award for Best Director. Only six times since the DGA Award’s inception in 1948 has the winner not gone on to receive the Academy Award for Best Director.
