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US movie icon Al Pacino on Wednesday brought Hollywood star power to the Rome film festival as he accepted a lifetime achievement award to help kick off the 10-day event.
"To receive an award like this for a body of work is hard to describe," said Pacino, a veteran of some 40 films. "You feel as though someone's giving you a party and you don't know what you've done to deserve it."
Accepting the award on behalf of New York's famed Hollywood springboard, the Actors Studio, he said the school "was a most important thing to me in my early career, and continues to be."
Recalling his work with Lee Strasberg as a young actor in the 1960s, Pacino, now 68, said it was "nerve-wracking because he was the guru of acting. (But) he never once instructed me or judged my performance."
The Actors Studio, founded in 1974, helped launch the careers of many stars including James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Dustin Hoffman and the late Paul Newman.
"The Actors Studio is free, not many people know that," said Pacino, who was nominated several times for an Oscar but has so far only won one, for "Scent of a Woman" in 1992.
"Anyone can audition, it doesn't matter how old you are, where you're from or who you're affiliated with, and if you're accepted you're there for life," said Pacino, who played Michael Corleone in "The Godfather" trilogy.
Despite the nod to Hollywood, the third Rome film festival was expected to shine the spotlight on European talent.
Only one American feature will be among the 20 films in competition, Gavin O'Connor's "Pride and Glory" starring Edward Norton.
Five Italian films include a Monica Belluci vehicle, "L'Uomo Che Ama" (The Man Who Loves), to premier on Thursday.
A UN-backed project involving several big cinema names such as Jane Campion, Gael Garcia Bernal, Gaspar Noe, Gus Van Sant and Wim Wenders, "Huit/Eight" on the UN Millennium Development Goals to fight world poverty, would also be shown on Thursday.
Other political films include "Good" by British director Vicente Amorim, about the rise of Nazism, "Osama" director Siddiq Barmak's "Opium War" set in Afghanistan and mafia film "Galantuomini" by Edoardo Winspeare of Portugal.
All three are vying for the festival's best film, best actor and best actress prizes.
The festival, which will run until October 31, was launched in 2006 by then Rome mayor Walter Veltroni, a film buff with many friends in Hollywood.
Its future looked uncertain ahead of Italy's general elections in April as the right-wing candidate to succeed Veltroni, eventual winner Gianni Alemanno, threatened to scrap it or at least make it more Italian.
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