Shirley MacLaine honoured at Berlin Film Fest.
Says Hollywood losing its touch

Filmstar and Oscar-winning actress Shirley MacLaine, while speaking to the press at the Berlin Film Festival, where she was honoured, rued that the Hollywood studio system had forgotten how to make movies that move audiences. Instead MacLaine praised independent filmmakers for producing today's best pictures.

The 64-year-old American actress, who was in Berlin to receive an honorary Golden Bear for a lifetime of achievement, has appeared in more than 50 studio features.

She said that the times when Hollywood studios were synonymous with good, sensitive and meaningful films, were over. According to MacLaine, low-budget pictures were now where the most interesting stories were being told. "I love seeing things that are simultaneously comic and tragic, and seeing people turn on a dime to do it," MacLaine told Reuters, "I find that very moving and it holds my interest. I think that is happening in the independent film world, but I don't think that the studios know how to do that anymore."

The auburn-haired beauty began her film career in 1955 with Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry and won an Oscar for her role in the 1983-tearjerker Terms Of Endearment. She was honoured with a retrospective at the Berlin festival.

MacLaine has been paired in the past with Hollywood titans like Jack Nicholson, Frank Sinatra and Jack Lemmon, with whom she starred as a Paris prostitute in Irma La Douce. The actress, who was also renowned for her singing and dancing, has managed to continue a high-profile career even as an older performer in youth-obsessed Hollywood. She continues to make an average of one film per year.

Dressed in a red suit and cooling herself with a red Chinese fan, MacLaine said she had recently directed her first major film Bruno, which is to open in the United States this year. "I like directing," MacLaine, the older sister of veteran actor-director Warren Beatty, said of the role reversal, "It got me out of my trailer and I wasn't bored because I was always doing everything."

MacLaine said Hollywood's current No. 1 and heart-throb of millions, Leonardo DiCaprio, whom she called "a hell of a good little actor," was among her favourite young performers. She said she was also a fan of 25-year-old Oscar nominee Gwyneth Paltrow. She said both DiCaprio and Paltrow had managed to create a balance between blockbusters and modest, innovative productions.

Festival director Moritz de Hadeln said MacLaine was the 10th performer to be awarded a Special Golden Bear in the Berlinale's 49-year history. "For more than 43 years, she has delighted motion picture audiences throughout the world with some of the most memorable performances ever captured on film," de Hadeln said, "The films selected for our homage to Ms. MacLaine serve merely as an example of her extraordinary work."

Previous winners of the Festival's Golden Bear for lifetime achievement include Jack Lemmon, Italian siren Sophia Loren and French actress Catherine Deneuve. MacLaine accepted the Golden Bear at the screening of the 1979 film Being There, in which she starred with the late Peter Sellers.