Hackman award announced

Los Angeles ” Gene Hackman will be honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Award at next year’s Golden Globe Awards.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., which organizes the ceremony, announced Thursday the star of “The Conversation” and “Crimson Tide” will receive the honorary award for his career of nearly 80 films.

Hackman, 72, won a supporting-actor Oscar for 1992’s “Unforgiven” and a best-actor Oscar for 1971’s “The French Connection.” He also has Golden Globe Awards for those films and a comedic actor honor for last year’s “The Royal Tenenbaums.”

The DeMille award will be presented at the 60th annual Golden Globe banquet Jan. 19 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

Not resting on her laurels

Cape May, N.J. ” Winning an Oscar was great. So was being honored at a film festival. But Susan Sarandon has loftier goals.

“I’m going for a rest stop,” she said. “I have all my other awards, but I want a rest stop named for me.”

Sarandon, 56, a graduate of Edison High School, made the comments Thursday at the Cape May NJ State Film Festival, where she was presented with the Governor’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to Jersey Arts.

The Manhattan-born actress figures it’s not too much to ask. After all, Thomas Edison, Walt Whitman, Joyce Kilmer and Vince Lombardi all have New Jersey Turnpike rest stops named for them.

However, the rest stops are all named for deceased prominent people strongly associated with the state.

Supermodel pitches memorial

Berlin ” German supermodel Claudia Schiffer has lent her voice to a television campaign seeking donations for Germany’s still-unrealized Holocaust Memorial.

During its first two weeks, the ad featuring Schiffer has caused a spike in visits to a Web site for the citizen’s initiative to raise money for the project. Organizers said Friday it will be another two weeks until they know whether donations have increased.

Schiffer said she didn’t want to appear in the ad to keep the focus on the campaign, which has raised about $600,000.

“She was keen to demonstrate that this was a matter of personal opinion and not something to do with appearance,” said Thekla Heinike of the agency that designed the memorial.