Jamie Foxx will receive the Spotlight Award, Actor at the Palm Springs International Film Festival’s 2020 Awards Gala, PSIFF organizers announced on Thursday.
Foxx will receive the award for his performance in Destin Daniel Cretton’s “Just Mercy,” a fact-based drama in which he plays Walter McMillian, a man falsely convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Alabama in 1987. Michael B. Jordan co-stars in the film as Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer who founded the Equal Justice Initiative and worked to free McMillian and many other convicts denied justice because of their race and poverty.
Foxx was recently nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for the film.
Other honorees at this year’s gala are Antonio Banderas, Laura Dern, Adam Driver, Cynthia Erivo, Zack Gottsagen, Jennifer Lopez, Joaquin Phoenix, Martin Scorsese, Charlize Theron and Renee Zellweger.
The gala will take place on Thursday, Jan. 2 in the Palm Springs Convention Center. The festival will continue until Jan. 13 in the desert resort east of Los Angeles.