Sigourney Weaver will receive the 2016 Donostia Award at the 64th San Sebastian Festival.

A statement read: "The festival's most important honorary award acknowledges the career of the North American actress whose name has presided over some of the biggest productions in the last few decades, under the direction of movie makers such as Sir Ridley Scott, Peter Weir, James Cameron, Mike Nichols, Roman Polanski, Ang Lee and David Fincher."

Sigourney's most famous role has been as heroine Ellen Ripley in the 'Alien' franchise - a part she first played in Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror classic and is reprising for a fifth time in Neill Blomkamp's take on the killer Xenomorph extra-terrestrial species.

The festival will also be showing an out-of-competition screening of Sigourney's latest movie 'A Monster Calls' and she will receive the honour at the showing.

'A Monster Calls' is due for release on October 21 this year, and the Spanish/British fantasy drama film directed by J. A. Bayona is based on the 2011 novel of the same name by Patrick Ness.

Sigourney stars in the film as the grandmother of a little boy, Conor, who encounters a monster, played by Liam Neeson, 64, who is made of leaves and sticks in a human shape that tells him stories.