Francis Ford Coppola Accepts AFI Life Achievement Award

Francis Ford Coppola kept a calm, almost reserved demeanor through hours of glowing tributes, but the moment he finally took the stage his face lit up. Holding the AFI Life Achievement Award before a crowd that included relatives and several generations of Hollywood royalty, he thanked everyone with a warmth that filled the Dolby Theatre.

“Now I understand here, this place that created me, my home, isn’t really a place at all, but you — friends, colleagues, teachers, playmates, family, neighbors, all the beautiful faces are welcoming me back,” he said. “I am and will always be nothing more than one of you.”

The honor made him the 50th filmmaker to receive AFI’s top prize, a lineage that began with John Ford in 1973. Guests toasted the milestone with pours from the Francis Ford Coppola Winery, followed by a fittingly Italian finale of three-tiered cannolis.

Actors who have worked under Coppola’s direction spoke of him as both collaborator and mentor. “He’s very professorial. He talks about history and things and even older movies in the scene he’s inspired by,” recalled “The Godfather III” star Andy Garcia. “You go into working with him in a movie, and you go in seeking an associate’s degree and you would walk out with a master’s.”

Steven Spielberg didn’t mince words, calling “The Godfather” “the greatest American film ever made.” Robert De Niro, with a grin, lamented that he wound up in the sequel instead of the original. And Harrison Ford had to steady himself as he remembered his turn in Coppola’s 1974 thriller, “The Conversation.”

All those tributes converged on a single figure: Francis Ford Coppola, who accepted the AFI Life Achievement Award during a star-studded evening at the Dolby Theatre. Though the night celebrated a golden age of filmmaking, it also felt like a family reunion for the 86-year-old director, one of AFI’s founding trustees.

The evening’s ovations made clear that, half a century after “The Godfather,” Coppola’s influence still binds Hollywood’s past, present, and future.