ROBIN WILLIAMS TO RECEIVE HFPA�S CECIL B. DEMILLE AWARD AT 62ND ANNUAL GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS TO BE TELECAST LIVE ON NBC ON JANUARY 16

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. -- November 18, 2004 �- Robin Williams has been selected as the recipient of the 2005 Cecil B. DeMille Award from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for his �outstanding contribution to the entertainment field,� it was announced today at a morning press conference by Ben Stiller.

The award, voted by the board of directors of the HFPA, will be presented to Williams at the 62nd Annual Golden Globe Awards, to be held Sunday, January 16, 2005 and telecast live on NBC (8-11 pm EST). The event will take place in the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

Williams has received five Golden Globes; three as Best Actor (Comedy or Musical) for Mrs. Doubtfire, The Fisher King, and Good Morning, Vietnam. He also received a special Golden Globe for his vocal work in Aladdin and a Golden Globe as Best Television Actor (Comedy or Musical) for Mork & Mindy. He received six additional Golden Globe nominations; two as Best Actor (Drama) for Awakenings and Dead Poets Society, two as Best Actor (Comedy or Musical) for Patch Adams and Moscow on the Hudson, one as Best Supporting Actor for Good Will Hunting, and one as Best Television Actor (Comedy or Musical) for Mork & Mindy.

Williams first captured the attention of the world as Mork from Ork on the hit series Mork & Mindy. Born in Chicago and raised in Michigan and California, he trained at New York's Julliard School under John Houseman.

An Academy Award-winning actor and a multiple Grammy-winning performer unparalleled in the scope of his imagination, Robin Williams continues to enhance his repertoire of indelible characters with several upcoming projects.

In the spring of 2005 Williams will star in two films: Twentieth Century Fox will distribute the animated feature Robots, in which Williams voices the character of 'Fender,' a robot who's head, arms and legs fall off at the most inopportune moments. Fender teams up with Rodney Copperbottom (voiced by Ewan McGregor) as they journey to Robot City to meet Copperbottom's hero, the inventor Big Weld. Lions Gate will distribute the second film, David Duchovny's House of D. Williams co-stars in the drama as a mentally challenged 40 year-old friend of a delivery boy. Most recently, Williams completed principal photography on Mark Mylod's The Big White, a black comedy co-starring Holly Hunter, Woody Harrelson and Giovanni Ribisi.

In 1997, Williams received Academy and Screen Actors Guild awards for his performance as Sean Maguire, the therapist who counsels Matt Damon's title character -- a math genius -- in Gus Van Sant's Good Will Hunting. The Academy previously nominated Williams for best actor in The Fisher King, Dead Poets Society, and Good Morning Vietnam. Williams garnered a special honor from the National Board of Review for his performance opposite Robert DeNiro in Awakenings.

Williams' filmography includes a number of blockbusters. In 1993, he starred in Chris Columbus' Mrs. Doubtfire. For Mike Nichols, Williams portrayed Armand Goldman, in The Birdcage, for which the cast won a SAG ensemble award. In 1996, The Birdcage and Jumanji reached the $100 million mark in the USA in exactly the same week. Williams assumed the dual roles of Peter Pan/Peter Banning in Steven Spielberg's Hook and played a medical student who treats patients with humor in Patch Adams. Other blockbusters included Good Will Hunting, Dead Poet's Society, Good Morning,Vietnam, Flubber, and Aladdin.

Williams recently collaborated with two accomplished young directors -- Christopher Nolan and Mark Romanek. For Nolan, Williams starred opposite Al Pacino as reclusive novelist Walter Finch, the primary suspect in the murder of a teenaged girl in a small Alaskan town in Insomnia. In Romanek's One Hour Photo, Williams played a photo lab employee who becomes obsessed with a young suburban family. Most recently, Williams starred as a cutter (a person with the power to edit individuals' recorded histories) in Omar Naim's sci-fi thriller The Final Cut, co-starring Mira Sorvino and James Caviezel.

Williams' early motion picture credits include Paul Mazursky's Moscow on the Hudson, in which he played a Russian musician who decides to defect and The World According to Garp, George Roy Hill's adaptation of John Irving's acclaimed best-selling novel about a writer and his feminist mother. He made his cinematic debut as the title character in Robert Altman's Popeye.

Williams, who began his career as a stand-up comedian, is well known for monologues in which he makes free associative leaps punctuated by one liners about subjects as varied as politics, history, religion, ethnic strife and sex. Using only his voice, Williams created one of the most vivid characters in recent memory -- Aladdin's Blue Genie of the Lamp (which redefined how animations were voiced). For audio versions of his one-man shows and the children's record "Pecos Bill," Williams has won five Grammy Awards. His stage credits include a landmark production of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot," directed by Mike Nichols and co-starring Steve Martin, and, most recently, a short run in San Francisco of "The Exonerated."

Offstage, Williams takes great joy in supporting causes too numerous to identify -- covering the spectrum from health care and human rights, to education, environmental protection, and the arts. He toured the Middle East twice in as many years to help raise morale among the troops, and is perhaps best known philanthropically for his affiliation with Comic Relief.