We loved Mary Tyler Moore as Laura Petrie on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and as the iconic Mary Richards on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” roles in which she created a new paradigm for female leads in television. 

Now, her colleagues and co-workers plan to honor Moore with the Screen Actors (SAG) Life Achievement Award for career achievement and humanitarian accomplishment. She will receive the award at the 18th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards—the nation’s largest and only-nationally televised all-union awards show—which premieres live on TNT and TBS Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012, at 8 p.m. ET, 7 p.m. CT, 6 p.m. MT and 5 p.m. PT. SAG represents nearly 120,000 actors in film, television, industrials, commercials and music videos.

An accomplished actress, Moore has won seven Emmys, a Tony and an Academy Award nomination. She has won honors for her courageous performances, including her role as TV correspondent Betty Rollin who was battling breast cancer in “First, You Cry.” On the big screen, she has portrayed characters as varied as Beth Jarrett, a bitter mother coping with the death of a son in “Ordinary People,” to Elvis Presley’s last female co-star in “Change of Habit.” She was a hit on Broadway playing a quadriplegic sculptor fighting to determine her own destiny in “Whose Life Is It, Anyway?”

Her production company has produced some of the most lauded TV programs of all time, and for the past 30 years, she has served as a tireless advocate, giving hope to all those afflicted with Type 1 diabetes.

SAG President Ken Howard said:

Mary Tyler Moore won our hearts as Laura Petrie and Mary Richards, our respect as her production company became synonymous with quality television, our awe as she tackled difficult subject matter in film and on Broadway, and our admiration as she turned her public recognition into a catalyst to draw attention to critical and deeply personal health and social issues.

Moore’s first autobiography, After All, published in 1995, was a frank exploration of her childhood, personal challenges and career. Her second book, Growing Up Again: Life, Loves, and Oh Yeah, Diabetes, is a candid discussion of her battles with the disease since she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 1970.

Moore has served as international chairwoman of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) since 1984. She also has chaired JDRF’s biennial Children’s Congress since its inception in 1999.

As a Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Moore joins such previous honorees as Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward (1985), Elizabeth Taylor (1997), Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee (2000), Edward Asner (2001), Clint Eastwood (2002) and Shirley Temple Black (2005), Julie Andrews (2006), Charles Durning (2007), James Earl Jones (2008), Betty White (2009) and Ernest Borgnine (2010).