Sharon makes Clint's day

Stone arrives with husband Phil Bronstein to present the award

Hollywood actress Sharon Stone presented screen legend Clint Eastwood with a special award at this year's Venice Film Festival.

Eastwood received the coveted Golden Lion Career Achievement award at the start of this year's event on Wednesday.

The rest of the 10-day festival will also commemorate the 70-year-old actor's career by screening a selection of his movies, including episodes of Rawhide - the TV series which made him a household name 40 years ago.

Thumbs up: Eastwood's career is a festival highlight

It will also host the European premiere of his new film, Space Cowboys, which sees Eastwood play a retired US Air Force pilot sent into space to repair a damaged Russian satellite launched in the 1960s.

Festival director Alberto Barbera told Reuters TV that it was a great honour to have actor and director Eastwood at this year's event.

"We're very proud to have Clint in Venice. He's one of the last great icons of Hollywood cinema.

"He's a total film-maker - not only a popular and successful actor, well-known worldwide, but also an original film-maker who has been quite underestimated."

Hollywood Hero

The Venice festival is the world's oldest film event and its special award is recognised as one of the most prestigious in the movie industry.

Eastwood has received several critics' awards during his 54-film career but had to wait until 1992 before winning an Oscar, for the western Unforgiven - which he both directed and starred in.

Gere is in Venice with his wife Carey Lowel for his new movie

He is best-known for his silent but deadly roles as the tough police detective of the Dirty Harry movies and the enigmatic cowboy of Sergio Leone's cult spaghetti westerns.

Other Hollywood stars attending this year's Venice Film Festival include Richard Gere, Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer.

There are a total of 150 films being screened this year from all over the world.

But, in terms of the 20 pictures in competition for the coveted Golden Lion trophy, the emphasis is on Europe and Asia.

Only two of the films in the running for the prize come from the US.

One is Robert Altman's Dr T and the Women, starring Gere, and the other Julian Schnabel's Before Night Falls.

Controversial

The decline in American offerings is attributed to the fact that more and more US films are being released simultaneously in Europe to speed up the process of releasing them as DVDs.

Screen veterans Donald Sutherland and Tommy Lee Jones are also in town

Among the rest of the movies on show, one of the most talked about is The Man Who Cried, from British director Sally Potter.

It stars Christina Ricci as a wandering Jewish waif in 1930s Europe who falls in love with a gypsy musician, played by Ricci's Sleepy Hollow co-star Johnny Depp.

Of the Asian entries, the Chinese movie Platform, by director Jia Zhang Ke, is likely to draw attention.

The film does not have Chinese government approval because it chronicles the growth of youth-based pop culture in China in the 1980s.

Legendary Italian director Martin Scorsese is also due at the festival. He will present a four-and-a-half-hour documentary about Italian movies called Dolce Cinema.

He will then go on to Rome to start work on his new movie Gangs of New York with Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis.