Editor

The 19th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) will honor Academy Award winner Daniel Day-Lewis with its prestigious Desert Palm Achievement Award for his latest film There Will Be Blood at the Festival's annual Awards Gala on Saturday, January 5, 2008. Past actors that have received this award include Nicolas Cage, Liam Neeson, John Travolta and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Festival chairman Earl Greenburg said, "Daniel Day-Lewis is a tremendously accomplished actor with an impressive body of work on both stage and screen. We're delighted to bestow the honor of the Festival's Desert Palm Achievement Award for his intense award winning performances over the years and particularly for his role in There Will be Blood."

Hosted by "Entertainment Tonight's" Mary Hart, the Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Gala will also honor Juno with the Chairman's Vanguard Award, Hairspray with the Ensemble Performance Award, Sean Penn with Director of the Year, Jerry Weintraub with the SAG Foundation Patron of the Arts Award, Marion Cotillard with the Breakthrough Performance Award and Emile Hirsch and Nikki Blonsky with the Rising Star Awards at the Palm Springs Convention Center.

Day-Lewis stars in There Will Be Blood, which will be released by Paramount Vantage later this year. The film, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, tells the story about family, greed, religion, and oil, centered around a turn-of-the-century Texas prospector played by Daniel Day-Lewis in the early days of the business. The film also stars Paul Dano.

From his earliest roles, Daniel Day-Lewis impressed audiences and critics alike, moving easily from a punk rocker in My Beautiful Launderette to a delightfully foppish Victorian suitor in Merchant-Ivory's A Room With A View. Together these performances earned him 1986's New York Film Critics Circle Award as Best Supporting Actor, the first of a string of accolades, including an Academy Award for Best Actor, three Academy Award nominations, two BAFTA awards for Best Actor, four BAFTA nominations and four Golden Globe nominations. Day-Lewis also won the Screen Actors Guild Award twice, the New York Critics Award three times and the LA Film Critics Award.

Though Day-Lewis has continued to turn in one highly-praised performance after another, it was his role as writer, artist and cerebral palsy sufferer Christy Brown in My Left Foot for director Jim Sheridan which won him an Academy Award for Best Actor. He received his second Academy Award nomination for In the Name of the Father, his second collaboration with Sheridan - the true story of a man unjustly imprisoned for 15 years - and his third for his portrayal of Bill "The Butcher" Cutting in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York. His other wide-ranging roles include the early American adventurer Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans, and the aristocratic Newland Archer in his first collaboration with Martin Scorsese, The Age of Innocence.

Born in London, Day-Lewis was first introduced to acting when he was at school in Kent, England. His acting debut was in Cry, The Beloved Country and his film debut was at the age of 14 in Sunday Bloody Sunday, in which he played a vandal in an uncredited role. He later applied and was accepted to the renowned Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, which he attended for three years, eventually performing at the Bristol Old Vic itself. In the 1970s and early 1980s, we worked on stage, appearing with the Bristol Old Vic Theater Company, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theater, turning in notable performances in "Another Country," "Dracula," "Futurists" and "Hamlet," in which he played the title role.

Day-Lewis's additional film credits include Philip Kaufman's film version of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, in which he won praise for his memorable performance in the leading role, and the Arthur Miller classic The Crucible, in which he portrayed Puritan John Proctor opposite Winona Ryder, directed by Nicholas Hytner. He joined up with Jim Sheridan once again for the lead role in The Boxer, and most recently Day-Lewis was seen in Rebecca Miller's powerful and poetic The Ballad of Jack And Rose.

Founded in 1990 by then Mayor Sonny Bono, the PSIFF is one of the largest film festivals in North America. The Festival has an attractive film sales and distribution record and is seen by American distributors as one of the best Academy Award campaign marketing tools. The Festival also features cultural events, filmmaker tributes, industry seminars and an annual black-tie gala award presentation.

Renewing their support of this year's Festival is Title Sponsor, The City of Palm Springs and Presenting Sponsors, Spencer's Restaurant, The Desert Sun, the City of Indian Wells, the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, Entertainment Tonight and Wessman Development. Major sponsors include Mercedes-Benz, the Official Vehicle of the Festival, Integrated Wealth Management, Bank of America, Regal Entertainment, Ciroc/Don Julio/Johnnie Walker and Wells Fargo.

The 19th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival, scheduled from January 3-14, 2008, will feature a line up of more than 230 films from 65 countries, seminars, special events and Gala receptions. For additional information call 760-322-2930 or 800-898-7256 or www.psfilmfest.org.