US actress Jane Fonda smiles as she poses upon arriving at the Festival Palace in Cannes, southern France. [AFP]

The 60th Cannes film festival, which wrapped up Sunday, awarded a Palme d'Or for lifetime achievement to veteran US actress and activist Jane Fonda over the weekend.

The exceptional Golden Palm prize, awarded by festival chief Gilles Jacob, had only been awarded three times before since 1946, to French directors Alain Resnais and Gerard Oury and the French actress Jeanne Moreau.

Jacob presented the surprise honour at a dinner after a screening of Sidney Lumet's classic "12 Angry Men" as a tribute to her late father Henry, who died in 1982.

"I never imagined that the Cannes film festival would honour a person who was spied on and tracked by the FBI, a person who has a 20,000-page file," Jacob noted with a touch of irony, referring to her campaign against the Vietnam war, and later the US invasion of Iraq.

"You are a woman who fights and wins."

A visibly moved Fonda, 69, said she was "overwhelmed" by the special prize.

"I have the feeling my father is with me tonight. The whole Fonda family thanks you," she said in French.

"He loved progressive films and those films taught me important things: justice, democracy.... I feel inspired by and proud of the heritage he left us."

The two-time Oscar winner was accompanied at the dinner by her daughter by Roger Vadim, Vanessa.

US director Robert Rodriguez said during the festival that he has signed on to remake Fonda's iconic cult hit "Barbarella."