Screen legends such as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas gathered in Hollywood on Saturday to honor director Francis Ford Coppola with the American Film Institute's highest award for his risky career.

Coppola, 86, received the lifetime achievement trophy from Lucas and Spielberg, who praised their colleague and friend of decades.

"Daredevil," Spielberg called him, adding that "The Godfather," Coppola's most famous production, was "the greatest American film ever made."

"You took what was there and redefined the canon of American cinema," he said.

Lucas praised him for teaching him "not to be afraid to jump off the cliffs" and for fighting the system.

"We wrote the rules and you held the pencil," he remarked.

Stepping onto the podium at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, in front of his family and many of the actors whose careers he launched or helped launch, Coppola said he felt as if he were returning to his old neighborhood.

"So many friends and neighbors smiling back at me," the director said. "They've all grown older, but somehow they're the same."

"Here now I understand that the place that raised me, my home, wasn't a place, but you... all those beautiful faces that welcome me back because I am and always will be nothing more than one of you."

Coppola, who recounts among his anecdotes having thrown his five Oscars out the window in a fit of rage while trying to make "Apocalypse Now," heard emotional tributes from Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Diane Lane, Harrison Ford, and Ralph Macchio, among others, who thanked the filmmaker for daring and taking a chance on them.

"You gave a chance to a bunch of nobodies who could have been somebody," said Macchio, who starred in "The Rebels," alongside then-rookies Patrick Swayze, Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez, and Diane Lane.

"When the studio wanted stars, you fought for actors," said Dustin Hoffman, who joked that despite launching so many young actors' careers, he only recruited him for one film ("Megalopolis") when Hoffman was 86.

"The wait was worth it," he continued.

The independent American Film Institute (AFI) has honored figures such as Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, and Al Pacino, among others, in previous editions.

Pacino joined De Niro this Saturday to salute Coppola, who directed them in the first two installments of "The Godfather."

Coppola, who faced a thousand battles to make the film, told AFP before the ceremony that there is no art without taking risks.

"I think making art without taking risks is like making babies without having sex," he said. "It's possible, but it's not the best way to do it."