LOS ANGELES(Reuters) - Hollywood star Robert Redford will receive an honorary Oscar at the Academy Awards in March recognizing his work as an actor, director and founder of the Sundance Institute for aspiring filmmakers, organizers said Friday.
Presentation of the award comes as Redford, 64, revives his acting career with the recent films The Last Castle and Spy Game and celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Sundance Institute.
The institute's most visible program, the Sundance Film Festival, which has grown into the world's premiere showcase for independent movies, just wrapped its latest edition in Park City, Utah.
The citation on Redford's honorary Oscar will read: "Robert Redford -- Actor, Director, Producer, Creator of SSundance, Inspiration to independent and innovative filmmakers everywhere."
Redford has appeared in more than 35 films since making his big- screen acting debut in the 1962 drama War Hunt.
His best-known movies include The Way We Were with Barbra Streisand, All the President's Men with Dustin Hoffman and his two pairings with Paul Newman -- as an outlaw in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and as a con artist in The Sting, for which he earned an Oscar nomination.
Redford's 1980 feature directorial debut, the family drama Ordinary People, earned him an Academy Award, and he was nominated as best director again for 1994's Quiz Show.
The 74th annual Academy Awards will be presented at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood March 24.
© 2002 Reuters/Variety REUTERS