Belafonte speaks after receiving the Oscar statuette for the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Photo: Kevork Djansezian/Reuters

Octogenarian actor and singer Harry Belafonte, accepting a top Hollywood human rights award, asked fellow artistes and their industry to use their powerful platform to show the better side of humanity.

Before a star-studded audience and next to a long-time friend, actor Sidney Poitier, 87-year-old Belafonte received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, an honorary Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his lifelong fight for civil rights and humanitarian causes.

Honorary Oscars were also bestowed upon three prolific artistes who deeply influenced Hollywood: Irish actress Maureen O’Hara, who appeared on stage at 94, Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, 73, and French screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere, 83.

The Academy’s Governors Awards gala has become the kick-off to the film awards season, bringing some of the most powerful people in Hollywood under the same roof, gathering stars from a dozen films with potential to win Oscars in February.

Belafonte called artistes “the relevant voice of civilisation” and hoped they would help the world “see the better side of who and what we are as a species”.

He started out his speech remembering how Hollywood films like Tarzan and Song of the South fostered the racial divide in America and gave him an “early stimulus to the beginning of my rebellion”.

“Today’s cultural harvest yields a sweeter fruit,” he noted.

He also worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr in the civil rights movement, fought against Aids in Africa, volunteered as a United Nations goodwill ambassador for decades and now works on gang violence in American cities.

“He has been a warrior on the good side of the battlefield of social justice,” said actress and fellow activist Susan Sarandon, who presented him with the Oscar.