Italian composerand conductor Ennio Morricone will receive an honorary Oscar at next year'sAcademy Awards ceremony on Feb 25, 2007, 'for his magnificent and multifacetedcontributions to the art of film music.'

Remarkably,Morricone, who has received five nominations before, has never won the Oscar.His nominations were for Days Of Heaven (1978), The Mission (1986), The Untouchables (1987), Bugsy (1991) and Malena (2000).

'The board was respondingnot just to the remarkable number of scores that Mr Morricone has produced,'said Academy president Sid Ganis in a statement, 'but to the fact that so manyof them are beloved and popular masterpieces.'

Born in Rome,Morricone established himself working for Italian director Sergio Leone on his60s westerns A Fistful Of Dollars (1964), For A Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, The Bad And TheUgly (1966) and OnceUpon A Time In The West(1968).

His othercredits include all-time classics like The Battle Of Algiers (1966), Theorem (1968), Investigation Of A CitizenAbove Suspicion (1970),The Decameron (1971),Salo (1975), 1900 (1976), La Cage Aux Folles (1978), Once Upon A Time In America (1984), Cinema Paradiso (1988), Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1991), In The Line Of Fire (1993) and Bulworth (1998).

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