MADRID, Spain (AP)_ Three well-known movie actors will receive lifetime achievement awards at the 51th San Sebastian International Film Festival, organizers said Saturday.
Isabelle Huppert, Sean Penn and Robert Duvall will receive the Donostia Award at the nine-day event, which begins Sept. 18 in the seaside town of San Sebastian in Spain's northern Basque region.
"Despite the fact that (Huppert) has played the part of, let's say, not very recommendable heroines, she has always given them an ambiguity somewhere between pain and humor which is doubtlessly one of her greatest virtues as an actress," festival organizers said in a statement.
The festival organizers said Penn was "an actor who respects his ideas in both his life and his work. In not very many years, Sean Penn has shown that he is the worthy heir of an actor stock dating back to James Cagney in the thirties, Bogart in the forties, or Pacino in the seventies."
The festival said "Duvall's work always guarantees solidity. Considered as being one of the moment's greatest actors."
SAN SEBASTIAN, Spain (AFP) - Organizers of the 51st San Sebastian Film Festival, which opens next week, said French actress Isabelle Huppert and US actors Robert Duvall and Sean Penn will share the festival's Donostia Prize for lifetime achievement.
The trio emulate a host of famous screen stars to pick up the prestigious award, including Gregory Peck , who took the inaugural award in 1986, Bette Davis (1989), Lauren Bacall (1992) and Al Pacino (1996).
Jessica Lange , Bob Hoskins and Dennis Hopper were last year's winners.
"The trio have demonstrated through their work and personal comportment they thoroughly merit this prize which recognizes above all their professional career path," said the organisers of the festival, which opens on Thursday.
Huppert, at 48 a veteran of three decades in front of the camera and lauded by the San Sebastian Festival organisers as "one of the top names in world cinema", is scheduled to pick up her prize next Saturday.
Huppert starred in Michael Haneke's 2002 controversial release, "The Piano Teacher", which tells the story of a sexually repressed woman who begins an affair with a younger pupil.
Duvall, 72, who directed "Assassination Tango" last year, appeared in the 1962 classic "To Kill a Mockingbird", and received his first Academy Award for his role in the 1983 hit film "Tender Mercies".
The 43-year-old Penn, notorious Hollywood bad boy and former husband of the pop icon Madonna (news - web sites), recently starred in the hit picture "I am Sam" and is due to pick up his award on September 23.