Dolly Parton To Receive Honorary Oscar
on Jun 17, 2025
Dolly Parton’s Years Of Charitable Giving To Be Honored By Academy
And the Oscar goes to… Dolly Parton.
The country icon may have been nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Original Song, but she’s not just nominated this time.
On Tuesday, June 17, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced who would be receiving its lifetime achievement awards, known as the Governors Awards.
This year’s honorees include legendary film actor and producer Tom Cruise, choreographer and actress Debbie Allen, and production designer Wynn Thomas.
Dolly Parton will be receiving the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, with a press release stating, “Beloved performer Dolly Parton exemplifies the spirit of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award through her unwavering dedication to charitable efforts.”
About The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award
Selected by members of the Academy’s Board of Governors, these honorary Oscars will be given out on November 16 at the Academy’s 16th Governors Awards event at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Ovation Hollywood.
This event occurs annually several months before the Academy Awards ceremony is held in the spring, with the 98th Oscars set to be held on March 15, 2026.
Footage from the Governors Awards event is often shown during the Academy Awards ceremony, with honorees typically in attendance at both ceremonies.
For Dolly Parton, who has had a career as an actress in addition to her work as a recording artist, receiving the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award is a particularly special distinction.
According to the Academy, this is what the Board of Governors looks for in a Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award recipient:
“[This Oscar is given] to an individual in the motion picture arts and sciences whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry by promoting human welfare and contributing to rectifying inequities.”
Jean Hersholt, the award’s namesake, was a Hollywood actor who, in 1939, helped establish the Motion Picture Relief Fund, now known as the Motion Picture and Television Fund, which assists crew members and other employees of the film industry in receiving medical care.
The Academy Plans To Celebrate Dolly Parton
Praising Dolly, the Academy noted in its press release that she “is an international icon whose remarkable career spans seven decades,” adding that she is “one of the most accomplished [musical artists] in history, with 49 studio albums and more than 100 million records sold worldwide.”
Continuing, the Academy wrote that the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award is awarded to her in recognition of “her decades-long humanitarian efforts.”
“She has founded various charitable and philanthropic organizations, including the Dollywood Foundation, which was created in 1988 to inspire the children of East Tennessee — her home state — to achieve educational success.”
“Additionally, her literacy program, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, launched in 1995 in honor of her father, has provided children with 285 million books,” the press release notes. “It evolved into an international movement and remains the signature program of the Dollywood Foundation.”
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library allows for children under the age of five to receive a free book in the mail every month.
Learn more about the Imagination Library, here.
