LOS ANGELES — Clint Eastwood will receive the Life Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild for more than four decades of acting, directing and producing.

"Clint Eastwood is truly a film icon, a celebrated star of international magnitude," SAG President Melissa Gilbert said Tuesday. "His prolific career as an actor and filmmaker demonstrates a total command of the medium that has rightly earned him the admiration of his peers, the industry and the public. Over the past 42 years, he has starred in a remarkable 44 films and appeared in 55."

Eastwood will receive the honour next year at the 9th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards show in Los Angeles on March 9.

The 72-year-old Dirty Harry star received an Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1995. His 1992 western Unforgiven, in which he starred, won the Academy Award for best picture, and earned him a best-director Oscar.

SAG's Life Achievement Award for career achievement and humanitarian accomplishment goes annually to an actor who fosters the highest ideals of the profession, the guild said. Previous recipients include Sidney Poitier, Elizabeth Taylor, Jack Lemmon and Katharine Hepburn.

Eastwood's film credits also include The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Play Misty for Me, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Escape From Alcatraz and The Bridges of Madison County.