George Lucas, Jodie Foster, Sigourney Weaver Get France Legion of Honor

French President Emmanuel Macron honored five major figures in international cinema at a ceremony held at the Élysée Palace in Paris on July 15: Illumination founder and CEO Chris Meledandri, the producer behind the “Despicable Me” and “Minions” movies — the highest-grossing animated franchise of all time, with more than $5.7 billion at the global box office; “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” creator George Lucas; Jodie Foster, the two-time Oscar winner known for “Taxi Driver,” “The Silence of the Lambs” and “A Private Life;” Sigourney Weaver, whose credits include “Alien,” “Avatar” and “Call My Agent;” and French filmmaker Claude Lelouch, the Oscar-winning director of “A Man and a Woman.”

Weaver, Meledandri, Lucas and Foster were presented with the insignia of Knight of the Legion of Honor, while Lelouch received the insignia of Commander of Legion of Merit.

The ceremony was attended by filmmaker Costa-Gavras, Canal+ Group chairman Maxime Saada, Marrakech film festival boss Melita Toscan du Plantier, Cinépolis CEO Alejandro Ramírez, Annecy Film Festival chief Michael Marin, filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski, French visual artist JR, Prune Nourry, Illumination Studios Paris president Jacques Bled, Metropolitan FilmExport’s Victor Hadida, French culture minister Catherine Pégard, and CNC president Gaëtan Bruel, among others.

In his tribute to Meledandri, Macron credited him with helping turn France into one of the world’s leading animation hubs through his long-standing partnership with the Paris-based Mac Guff studio and the creation of Illumination Studios Paris in 2011.

“I am particularly delighted that you choose to spend several months of the year in France and that you have contributed to making our countries one of the world’s great centers of animation,” Macron said. “Thanks to your films, of course, but also because you personally supported, alongside the CNC, the creation of the international tax credit in 2009, an essential measure for the attractiveness of our country.”

Macron recalled that Meledandri recognized the “immense potential” of Mac Guff in 2007, when the French animation studio employed fewer than 100 people. Working with the studio’s artists, filmmaker Pierre Coffin and Pharrell Williams, Meledandri developed “Despicable Me,” which introduced Gru and the Minions and became the foundation of Illumination’s blockbuster franchise. Meledandri and Bled subsequently turned the Franco-American collaboration into a lasting partnership by establishing Illumination Studios Paris, where 16 feature films and 40 shorts have since been created.

“Film after film, you give us a new reason to go to the cinema,” Macron told Meledandri. “You also steadfastly defend the theatrical release of films in order to preserve that precious shared experience and collective joy. And I thank you for that.”

Illumination’s latest release, “Minions & Monsters,” directed and co-written by a French artist, Pierre Coffin, is currently playing in theaters and had grossed over $283 million worldwide by July 15.

Turning to Lucas, Macron traced the filmmaker’s journey from a teenager obsessed with cars in Modesto, California, to one of cinema’s most influential storytellers, recalling how a near-fatal car accident prompted him to exchange racing for filmmaking. He praised Lucas as part of the generation of filmmakers — alongside Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese — who anchored the New Hollywood era.

Macron described “Star Wars” as not merely a film but “an entire galaxy, a mythology” in which courage could triumph over death, a young man from a forgotten planet could become a knight among the stars and the fight for democracy could be transmitted from one generation to the next.

“Thanks to this film and the entire saga, you offered a new generation a territory of escape, a dream space where everything became possible again,” Macron said. He praised Lucas for combining the retro and futuristic while creating a cinematic universe encompassing sound design, monumental sets and epic storytelling.

The French president also celebrated Lucas’ influence beyond directing, calling him “an exceptional entrepreneur” who founded Lucasfilm, THX and Industrial Light & Magic. He highlighted Lucas’ ties to France, including his commitment to preserving the wine-growing traditions of Provence at Château Margüi, and recalled that Coppola presented him with an honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2024.

“You have become a great Jedi Knight of cinema, and today you become a Knight of the Legion of Honor,” Macron said. “For your pioneering use of technology in the service of cinema, for your visionary imagination and for this force that, for decades, has continued to inspire wonder in young and old, and for your love of France, I am extremely proud to present you today with the insignia of Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur.”

Macron devoted much of his tribute to Foster’s lifelong relationship with France, recalling that her mother, Evelyn, introduced her to French and European cinema, took her to Paris and bought an apartment on the Île Saint-Louis. He also highlighted Foster’s education at the Lycée Français de Los Angeles and Yale, where she studied literature and encountered Toni Morrison, as well as her early appearance at Cannes at the age of 13 with “Taxi Driver.”

The French president traced Foster’s evolution from child prodigy to two-time Oscar winner and filmmaker, praising her refusal to accept conventional female roles. He pointed to “The Accused,” in which she played a woman fighting to tell her story “in her own words,” and “The Silence of the Lambs,” where Clarice Starling was “a woman in a man’s world, strong in a world of brutes.”

“Again and again, there was your refusal of archetypes, of playing the woman or the daughter of someone else, and your choice of characters who exist in their own right, characters with strength,” Macron said. He also celebrated Foster’s pioneering transition behind the camera, noting that she was among the relatively few American actresses of her generation to become a director.

Macron went on to highlight Foster’s continuing ties to France, from her honorary Palme d’Or at Cannes to her leading French-language role opposite Daniel Auteuil in Rebecca Zlotowski’s “Vie privée” which world premiered at Cannes and was released in the U.S. by Sony Pictures Classics.

“France has always been like a second home to you, an intimate part of yourself and of your history,” Macron said. He also recalled Foster’s participation in the 80th anniversary commemorations of the Liberation of Paris and praised her battles against intrusions into private life and the pressures placed on actresses. “You have always been a free woman, as your mother showed and taught you to be.”

“For 50 years, you have embodied an independent, free woman,” Macron concluded, honoring Foster for “this immense talent,” for having been “a child prodigy, an exceptional student and an actress who, ultimately, has not so much passed through different ages as reinvented, each time, a new era for herself and for cinema,” as well as for her “love of our country.”

Macron hailed Weaver as a trailblazer who transformed the place of women in blockbuster filmmaking, recalling that when she was cast as Ripley in Ridley Scott’s “Alien,” “no one imagined that the last person to survive could be a woman,” much less Weaver, who was then unknown to the wider public.

“With ‘Alien,’ you therefore confronted the creature that devours the passengers of the Nostromo one by one, but also another no less formidable adversary: the constraints and prejudices of the time,” Macron said. “A heroine of courage, you also paved the way for so many other great female figures: Lara Croft, Katniss Everdeen, Imperator Furiosa and many others.”

The French president stressed that Weaver’s greatest strength may have been her refusal to remain confined to the role of an action heroine.

“You managed to remain part of the great franchises that made you famous while asserting yourself as a complete actress and, ultimately, an unclassifiable one,” Macron said. “You change register and role at will.”

He cited Weaver’s ability to move between comedy, drama and spectacle — from “Working Girl” and “Ghostbusters” to “Gorillas in the Mist,” “The Ice Storm,” “Master Gardener” and “Avatar,” while always searching for “the truth” of her characters and never taking “the easy way out.”

Calling France Weaver’s “adopted country,” Macron recalled that she lived for two years in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, speaks French, has filmed in the country – including a memorable episode of “Call My Agent” — and loves both French cinema and France’s “spirit of independence.”

Previous Hollywood filmmakers, actors and artists who have received the Legion of Honors during Macron’s mandate include Tom Cruise, Denis Villeneuve and Pharrell Williams, among others. Past recipients include Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood.