AFI 50th life achievement: Actor Anthony Hopkins should receive the American Film Institute award [Poll Results]

Chris Beachum
·3 min read

The American Film Institute will select its 50th life achievement award recipient in the next few months. We recently offered a poll about which epic actor should receive this AFI honor in 2025. Two-time Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins is your top choice with 20.33% of support based on our poll results.

In a separate poll, Francis Ford Coppola finished first ahead of Ron Howard and Ridley Scott among many possible directors. In another separate poll, we asked which legendary actress should receive this honor, with Glenn Close winning ahead of Maggie Smith and Judi Dench.

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Here are the results of the poll following Hopkins in first place:

Robert Redford (19.51%)

Gene Hackman (13.01%)

Daniel Day-Lewis (12.20%)

Michael Caine (10.57%)

Tom Cruise (7.32%)

Samuel L. Jackson (4.88%)

Leonardo DiCaprio (4.88%)

Jeff Bridges (4.07%)

Brad Pitt (0.81%)

Bill Murray (0.81%)

Robert Duvall (0.81%)

Robert Downey, Jr. (0.81%)

Sean Penn (0.00%)

Eddie Murphy (0.00%)

Michael Keaton (0.00%)

SEE American Film Institute (AFI) Life Achievement Recipients

Starting in the early 1970s, the AFI started choosing actors, actresses and directors with recipients being director John Ford (1973), actor James Cagney (1974), director/actor Orson Welles (1975), director William Wyler (1976), actress Bette Davis (1977), actor Henry Fonda (1978) and director Alfred Hitchcock (1979).

Past recipients still living (and therefore not eligible again) are: actor Jack Nicholson (1994), director Steven Spielberg (1995), actor/director Clint Eastwood (1996), director Martin Scorsese (1997), actor Dustin Hoffman (1999), actor Harrison Ford (2000), actress/director Barbra Streisand (2001), actor/director Tom Hanks (2002), actor Robert De Niro (2003), actress Meryl Streep (2004), director George Lucas (2005), actor Al Pacino (2007), actor/director Warren Beatty (2008), actor/producer Michael Douglas (2009), actor Morgan Freeman (2011), actress Shirley MacLaine (2012), director/actor Mel Brooks (2013), actress Jane Fonda (2014), actor/writer Steve Martin (2015), composer John Williams (2016), actress Diane Keaton (2017), actor/director George Clooney (2018), actor/director Denzel Washington (2019), actress Julie Andrews (2022) and actress/producer Nicole Kidman.

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