Prolific producer Lauren Shuler Donner has been selected by the board of directors of American Cinema Editors (ACE) to receive the organization’s prestigious ACE Golden Eddie Award. The honor will be presented at the 70th Annual ACE Eddie Awards black-tie ceremony on Friday, Jan. 17 in the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
Additionally, film editors Alan Heim, ACE and Tina Hirsch, ACE are set to receive Career Achievement awards for their outstanding contributions to film editing.
Cathy Repola, national executive director of the Motion Picture Editors Guild, will receive ACE’s Heritage Award, recognizing an individual’s commitment to advancing the image of the film editor, cultivating respect for the editing profession and dedication to ACE.
The awards ceremony will be hosted by actress D’Arcy Carden, best known as “Janet” on NBC’s hit series The Good Place.
“Lauren Shuler Donner is nothing short of a dynamo,” stated the ACE board of directors. “Her films have grossed billions worldwide and engaged audiences for almost 40 years. She is responsible for some of the most exciting franchises in film history and consistently champions great storytelling in all mediums. We are thrilled to celebrate her career thus far and can’t wait to see what she’ll do next.”
ACE president Stephen Rivkin, ACE, noted that “This year’s Career Achievement and Heritage Award honorees have immeasurably contributed to the legacy of ACE and the craft and business of film editing. It’s a very special year for us to be recognizing their achievements.”
Nominations for the ACE Eddie Awards were announced on Dec. 11.
Lauren Shuler Donner
Shuler Donner has, over the past four decades, established herself as one of the most successful and versatile producers in Hollywood. To date, her films have grossed $7 billion plus worldwide.
She was bound for success from the beginning, as the first feature film she produced was the smash hit comedy Mr. Mom. She then went on to produce Ladyhawke starring Matthew Broderick, Michelle Pfeiffer and Rutger Hauer, St. Elmo’s Fire and Pretty in Pink.
In the early 1990s, Shuler Donner produced the box office smash hits Dave and Free Willy, two of the top ten films of 1993. Shuler Donner went on to produce You’ve Got Mail with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, Any Given Sunday, Radio Flyer, 3 Fugitives, the sequel to Free Willy and Constantine with Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz.
In 2000, Shuler Donner began a new franchise with X-Men and followed up in 2003 with X2 which grossed $406 million internationally. X-Men: The Last Stand was released in May 2006 and a month later it was on its way to the half-billion-dollar mark worldwide.
Shuler Donner also produced The Secret Life of Bees for Fox Searchlight, which was written and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood and stars Queen Latifah, Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Hudson, Alicia Keys, Sophie Okonedo and Paul Bettany.
Shuler Donner’s next film was X-men: First Class, which received critical raves, The Wolverine, and X-Men: Days of Future Past, which received both critical acclaim and grossed $748 million worldwide.
It took six years to get made, but in 2016 Deadpool, produced by Shuler Donner and Simon Kinberg, was released and grossed a whopping $782,612,155.
Her other productions include Timeline with Paul Walker and Gerard Butler, She’s The Man with Amanda Bynes, and Hotel For Dogs starring Emma Roberts. As head of The Donners’ Company, she has executive-produced Volcano, Bulworth and Just Married.
Shuler Donner was an executive producer on Legion from Noah Hawley which aired its third and final season for FX June 25, 2019, and The Gifted for FOX with Matt Nix.
Shuler Donner’s next film projects will include an adaptation of Sherman Alexie’s "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian," and There There for HBO based on the best-selling book by Tommy Orange.
Next up: Broadway musicals based on her films Dave and Secret Life of Bees.
A lifelong philanthropist, Shuler Donner served on the board of directors for Hollygrove Children’s Home until it merged with EMQ in 2006. She has been on the advisory board of Women in Film, was a long-time member of the advisory board of Tree People and is a past board member of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles. She has been serving on the advisory board of Lupus L.A. for the past ten years. In addition, she has served as the Treasurer for the Producers Guild of America and is on the executive committee of the Producer’s Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In May 2019, Shuler Donner received her Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Boston University, plus she delivered the Commencement Speech to the graduates of BU’s College of Communication.
She has been recognized with numerous awards over the course of her career including the esteemed Crystal Award from Women in Film, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Ojai Film Festival and the Icon Award from Elle Magazine’s Women in Hollywood Awards.
Alan Heim, ACE
Heim has edited for some of the best directors in the business, including Sidney Lumet, Mel Brooks, Bob Fosse, John Hughes and Milos Foreman. He won an Academy Award® for editing Fosse’s All That Jazz and was Oscar® nominated for his work on Lumet’s Network. He has also won and been nominated for several ACE Eddies and Emmys®.
Heim’s impressive filmography also includes films American History X, Hair, Lenny, Godspell, Star 80, Funny Farm and The Notebook and television programs such as Holocaust, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge and Grey Gardens.
In 2012 Heim was honored with the prestigious Camerimage Special Award for Lifetime Achievement.
He has served on the board of directors of both American Cinema Editors and the Motion Picture Editors Guild for many years, including as president of both organizations during his years of service. He currently serves as president of the Motion Picture Editors Guild.
Tina Hirsch, ACE
Hirsch is an accomplished film editor who made history in 2000 when she was elected as the first female president of American Cinema Editors. She has forged a career that has effortlessly weaved between action, documentary, comedy and sci-fi like few others.
Hirsch’s first theatrical feature was the box-office sleeper, Macon County Line. Her work caught the eye of legendary producer-director, Roger Corman, who hired her to edit three of his classic films, Big Bad Mama, Death Race 2000 and Eat My Dust.
Soon after she entered the more mainstream “studio” world, editing The Driver for Walter Hill, who was a fan of the Corman films, and More American Graffiti for George Lucas. Then she teamed up with Joe Dante and Steven Spielberg. They did Twilight Zone, The Movie and Gremlins together. The films Explorers, Mystery Date, Captain Ron and Dante’s Peak followed.
In the mid ‘90’s Hirsch began working in television. Among other things, she edited the pilot for Party of Five, the miniseries, Tom Clancy’s Op Center (for which she earned an Eddie nomination), the Hallmark Hall of Fame film based on the Anne Tyler novel Back When We Were Grownups (for which she was given an Eddie and Emmy nomination), and the acclaimed television series The West Wing (for which she won an Eddie and earned an Emmy nomination).
Hirsch served as an adjunct professor of editing at USC School of Cinematic Arts for many years.
Cathy Repola
Repola has served the Motion Picture Editors Guild in several top leadership roles since 1992. She currently serves as the organization’s national executive director and has done so since 2016. Ironically, Repola was not planning on working in the entertainment industry but she got a temporary job out of college with a union that represents clerical people in the industry–that temporary job turned into a permanent one. She became the shop steward, her nickname became “Norma Rae” and after sitting through the collective bargaining process, the light bulb went off and she knew that this was what she wanted to do. She then got a job with the union that she belonged to, OPEIU. A few years later, she saw an ad that Motion Pictures Editors was looking for an assistant executive director – the rest is history.
