SAN SEBASTIAN, Spain (AFP) ― Australian actor Hugh Jackman, the star of “Wolverine” and “X-Men,” received a lifetime achievement award on Friday at the San Sebastian film festival in northern Spain.

“I will take this as a charge to go on working for many more years to move you and entertain you,” he said after collecting the festival‘s Donostia award for his film career from the hands of Mexican actor Diego Luna at a ceremony held at beachside congress centre in the coastal city of San Sebastian.

“I have to say how humbly grateful and how surprised I am to receive this award. It means a lot to me for many reasons. It is a rare thing as an actor to take a moment and look back at sometime, you always tend to think ahead to the future,” the 44-year-old actor added at a press conference.

The Donostia Award ― the Basque name for the coastal city San Sebastian ― has been given out each year at the festival since 1986 to “a great film personality in recognition for their work and career.”

Past recipients include Gregory Peck, Bette Davis, Susan Sarandon, Meryl Streep, Richard Gere and Robert De Niro.

Jackman toured San Sebastian, a picturesque seaside resort on the northwest Atlantic coast of Spain, by bicycle for several hours before picking up his award.

Wearing jeans and a black blazer, he smiled and posed with fans after his film “Prisoners” was screened out of competition at the festival, the oldest and most prestigious event of its kind in the Spanish speaking world.

Directed by Canada’s Denis Villeneuve the nearly two and a half hour long movie tells the story of a distraught father, played by Jackman, who holds captive and tortures the troubled young man he believes kidnapped his six-year-old daughter.

Jackman, the father of two children with his wife, Deborra-Lee Furness, said he researched the part by learning about kidnapping experiences and drawing on his own experiences as a parent.

“It is the most difficult research I‘ve ever done,” he said.

“I knew a film like this would take an unconventional director like Denis,” added Jackman, who will play Wolverine for the seventh time in next year’s “X-Men: Days of Future Past”