Spanish film legend Fernando Fernan-Gomez will add another notch to his belt this year with the receipt of the Spanish Cinema Academy's prestigious Gold Medal lifetime achievement award.

The Academy this week unveiled Fernan-Gomez as the newest recipient of an award whose previous honorees include a long list of revered local talent such as actors Paco Rabal, Fernando Rey and Sara Montiel, producer Elias Querejeta, Oscar-winning production designer Gil Parrondo, and directors Carlos Saura and Jose Luis Borau.

Perhaps best known among modern-day film-goers as the father in Fernando Trueba's Oscar-winning Belle Epoque, Fernan-Gomez has worked in 173 films in his career, more than 20 of which he himself wrote and directed. In 1999 he was given the San Sebastian International Film Festival's Donostia Award, an honor last year bestowed on Robert De Niro.

He was seen most recently as Penelope Cruz's father in Pedro Almodovar's All About My Mother (Todo Sobre Mi Madre) and as a free-thinking Civil War-era teacher in Jose Luis Cuerda's Butterfly (La Lengua De Las Mariposas).