Jack Lemmon ham, a fine ham, and with ham you have to trim a little fat." The biography quotes Lemmon as saying, "I am particularly susceptible to the parts I play... If my character was having a nervous breakdown, I started to have one." He enjoyed longtime working relationships with both Blake Edwards, starring in "Days of Wine and Roses" (1962), "The Great Race" (1965) and "That's Life!" (1986), and Richard Quine, starring in "My Sister Eileen", "Operation Mad Ball", "Bell, Book and Candle", "It Happened to Jane", and "How to Murder Your Wife". Quine also directed Lemmon's screen test when the
Jack Lemmon Cannes award for his performance in "Missing" (which received the Palme d'Or as well). In 1986, the U.S. National Board of Review of Motion Pictures gave Lemmon a "Career Achievement" award; two years later, the American Film Institute gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award. "Days of Wine and Roses" (1962) was a favorite role of Lemmon's. He portrayed Joe Clay, a young, fun-loving alcoholic businessman. In that film, Lemmon delivered the line, "My name is Joe Clay ... I'm an alcoholic." Three and a half decades later, he stated on the television program "Inside the Actors Studio" that he was