Acclaimed Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent is being honoured with this year's Legacy Award by the Stratford Festival, where he performed early in his stage career.

Pinsent, who joined the company in 1962 with roles in Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest and Cyrano de Bergerac, returned to Stratford in the mid-'70s as a leading player.

Pinsent went on to pick up almost 150 film and television credits.

He won the best actor Genie and ACTRA awards in 2006 for his work in Sarah Polley's Away from Her and the Genie for best actor in The Shipping News, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Annie Proulx.

Pinsent, who was born in Grand Falls, N.L., and started out in radio drama, is a companion of the Order of Canada and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He's received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award, the Earle Grey Award for lifetime achievement in television, and a star on Canada's Walk of Fame.

The Legacy Award will be handed out on Sept. 26 in Toronto. Christopher Plummer, who received the festival's inaugural Legacy Award, will make the presentation.

Pinsent's body of work is also being highlighted at this year's Toronto International Film Festival with Brigitte Berman's documentary The River of My Dreams: A Portrait of Gordon Pinsent.

The actor also voiced the bear in the new Kim Nguyen film Two Lovers and a Bear, starring Tatiana Maslany, which is screening at TIFF.