Lily Tomlin is first openly gay performer chosen to receive SAG Lifetime Achievement Award

Love this – love this so much! Lily Tomlin made some history today when it was announced that she will receive the 2015 Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.

She is the first openly gay person to be chosen since the award began in 1962.

Along the way it has been given to such Hollywood legends as Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds, Paul Newman, Audrey Hepburn, Julie Andrews, Sidney Poitier, Angela Lansbury, Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore and Carol Burnett, among many others.

SAG-AFTRA President Gabrielle Carteris describes Tomlin as ‘an extraordinary actress, as equally adept at narrative drama as in comedy roles.

‘She has an ability to create diverse and distinct characters that are at once familiar, eccentric and oh so honest – in a way that illuminates life’s hidden corners,’ Carteris adds. ‘From Edith Ann to Frankie, her characters are wholly unique, and by exposing every nuance of human behavior they widen our scope of understanding.’

Tomlin, 76, got her first big break when she was added to the cast of the NBC sketch comedy show Laugh-In in 1970 where she introduced to the world such iconic characters as Ernestine, Edith Ann and Mrs. Judith Beasley.

Since then she has triumphed in films (Grandma, Nashville, 9 to 5, Big Business, Short Cuts, All of Me, A Prairie Home Companion), on Broadway (The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe), and on television currently starring opposite Jane Fonda in the Netflix comedy Grace & Frankie.

She has been married to Jane Wagner since 2013 but the couple has been together personally and professionally for more than 45 years.