Oscar-winning actor Jeff Bridges was described as «royalty» by his peers on Friday as he sunk his hands and feet into the cement at Hollywood’s TCL Chinese Theatre.
The 67-year-old actor, who has been nominated for a Golden Globe this year for «Hell or High Water,» was surrounded by fellow actors and industry heavyweights, including Sharon Stone and Chris Pine, during the ceremony.
«He is a pillar. He is a backbone. He may as well be royalty,» said Pine as he introduced the veteran actor. «Even within the business, actors are fangirling over Jeff Bridges all the time, including myself. »
Pine added that Bridges, who won an Oscar in 2010 for his performance in «Crazy Heart,» just «breathes love. »
«He has a heart miles and miles wide. His bandwidth for love, compassion and positivity is something to really behold,» Pine said.
Bridges, dressed in a suit and tie, recalled coming to the iconic theater as a kid and joked that his brother Beau had told him to «bliss out» and enjoy the imprint ceremony.
The actor has been a Hollywood leading man since the 1970s and is notably known for playing Jeff «The Dude» Lebowski in the 1998 Coen Brothers cult comedy classic «The Big Lebowski. «

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Heavy smog has blanketed a third of China’s cities, including its capital Beijing, with 62 issuing health alerts since Jan. 1, officials said. The hazardous air has forced hundreds of flight cancellations or delays and is forecast to linger into the weekend in some areas.
The concentration of PM2.5 particles — which pose the greatest health risks because they can become lodged in the lungs — was 475 micrograms per cubic meter near Tiananmen Square at 8 a.m. Wednesday, according to the municipal air-monitoring website. The World Health Organization recommends PM2.5 exposure of no more than 25 micrograms over a 24-hour period.
Pollution was at medium or higher levels in 186 cities Tuesday, according to the latest update issued by the Ministry of Environmental Protection. About 25 cities, including Shijiazhuang and Baoding in Hebei Province and Jinan and Dezhou in Shandong, have issued red alerts, the highest level pollution warning, prompting vehicle use restrictions and industrial production curbs, the ministry said.
In Beijing, city streets are full of pedestrians wearing masks, while many individuals and companies rely on expensive air filters to cut indoor levels of toxic air. Northern China is particularly polluted in winter because of a combination of fog and other weather conditions that trap industrial and auto emissions and those from burning millions of tons of coal used for heating in below-freezing temperatures.
Calls for the government to get tough and clear the skies has led to some punishment for companies, but local officials also must balance enforcement actions with the central government’s goals to keep economic growth humming.
Heavy pollution could remain until Saturday, officials said. Beijing, Tianjin and 20 other cities have extended their orange alerts, the second-highest level.
More than 430 flights were canceled Sunday in Beijing and neighboring Tianjin, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. More than 180 flights have been canceled in Zhengzhou, stranding 1,000 passengers in the capital of Henan, while 164 flights were scrubbed in Hebei’s capital, Shijiazhuang, local media reported.
By noon Wednesday, 14 flights had been canceled at Beijing Capital International Airport and average delays had reached 36 minutes, according to Flightaware.com.
Beijing environmental officials said Tuesday that overall air quality had improved in 2016, with the total number of “blue sky days” up 12 from 2015 and the average PM2.5 measure dropping 9.9 percent to an average of 73 micrograms.
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The New Year is a time of resolutions and 2017 offers the opportunity to see some improvements in rugby. Here is a list of five things we would like to see in the coming months.

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Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen left for the United States Saturday on her way to Central America, a trip that will be closely watched by Beijing, incensed by her congratulatory call to Donald Trump.
While the focus of the nine-day trip is to visit Taiwan’s ally nations in Central America, Beijing-sceptic Tsai’s transit stops in Houston this weekend and San Francisco next weekend will be under scrutiny as cross-strait tensions rise.
Tsai’s conversation with Trump in December after he won the presidency upended decades of diplomatic precedent in which Washington has effectively ignored Taipei in favour of Beijing, which considers Taiwan a breakaway province to be brought back within its fold.
Since then, China has stepped up military drills near Taiwan, with speculation its sole aircraft carrier may pass through the Taiwan Strait during or shortly after Tsai’s trip.
The drills are seen as a show of strength by Beijing as its ties with the self-ruled island and the US deteriorate.
Beijing has asked Washington to bar Tsai from flying through US airspace.
«A transit is a transit,» the Taiwanese leader told reporters last week, when asked whether she would be meeting anyone from Trump’s administration.
Trump himself appeared to have ruled out meeting Tsai this trip, saying it is «a little bit inappropriate» to meet anybody until he takes office January 20.
Taiwan’s presidential office declined to provide details of Tsai’s itinerary during her US stays.
«What China cares most about is whether Tsai and Trump will meet,» political analyst Liao Da-chi told AFP.
«These are all warning signals to see how Taiwan will respond, as well as testing waters with the US,» added Liao, a professor at the National Sun Yat-sen University.
Tsai will visit Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador — among the dwindling number of states that officially recognise Taiwan.
She will attend the presidential inauguration in Nicaragua on Tuesday and meet with the heads of states of the other three nations.
Taiwan is down to 21 allies after the small African nation of Sao Tome and Principe switched recognition to Beijing last month.
The Vatican is Taiwan’s highest-profile supporter, but the Holy See’s recently improving relations with Beijing is casting doubt over ties with the island.
Analyst Liao said Beijing would continue to woo the island’s allies as a pressure tactic on Tsai, who refuses to acknowledge the concept that there is only «one China».
Taiwan’s defence ministry has declined to comment on speculation that China’s Liaoning aircraft carrier may pass through the Taiwan Strait on its return journey after its first exercise in the Pacific.
The ministry is «monitoring at all times» the position of the Liaoning, spokesman Chen Chung-chi said.
The vessel and five other warships passed south of the island outside Taiwan’s air defence identification zone last month, before heading to the South China Sea.

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China’s foreign exchange reserves fell for a sixth straight month in December but by less than expected to the lowest since February 2011, as authorities stepped in to support the yuan ahead of U. S. President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Reserves fell by $41 billion last month to $3.011 trillion, central bank data showed on Saturday, following a drop of $69.06 billion in November.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected reserves to drop $51 billion to $3.001 trillion, from $3.052 trillion at the end of November.
The yuan depreciated 6.6 percent against the surging dollar in 2016, its biggest one-year loss since 1994, and is expected to weaken further this year despite authorities’ latest attempts to slow its descent.
Adding to pressure on the currency, Trump has vowed to label China a currency manipulator on his first day in office on Jan. 20 and has threatened to impose huge tariffs on imports of Chinese goods.
While the world’s second-largest economy still has the largest stash of forex reserves by far, it has burned through half a trillion dollars since August 2015, when it stunned global investors by devaluing the yuan.
If forex reserves continue to be depleted at a rapid pace and capital flight continues, some strategists believe China’s leaders may have little choice but to sanction another big «one-off» devaluation which would roil global financial markets.
China’s gold reserves fell to $67.878 billion at end-December from $69.785 billion at end-November.

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BEIJING – “The snow is very dirty! The snow is very dirty! The snow is very dirty!” This thrice-emphasized warning from Beijing’s Meteorological Bureau appeared on Chinese social media site Weibo on Thursday after the country’s Ministry of Environmental Protection announced the city’s average air-quality index for the past month came in at 195, with a high of 470, Time reports.
To put that in context, the WHO notes that 25 is a generally safe level. And, apparently, the particles present in the air have settled into the precipitation, turning the city’s first snowfall of the year on Thursday into what the magazine refers to as “toxic snow.” Residents venturing out in the capital have been informed that no one will think the worse of them if they use protection.
“It is not pretentious to use an umbrella on a snowing smoggy day,” the bureau notes, though it advises just staying indoors altogether. Beijing’s smog has been an ongoing health hazard, triggering multiple “red alerts” over the past couple of years, and the smog currently plaguing the city (along with the accompanying orange alert) is expected to stick around until the weekend, per Shanghaist , which notes another smog-related story has grabbed headlines this week.
Photos of a normally gleaming-white bullet train that sped 500 miles from Shanghai to Beijing went viral, with the train’s grime-covered exterior looking like something out of an apocalyptic movie.
(Some of the dirtiest air in the US can be found in an unlikely spot .)
This article originally appeared on Newser: Beijing Advises Umbrellas to Shield Against Its Gross Snow
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