Fanny Ardant angers Italy over her guerrilla "hero"

ROME, Aug 24 (Reuters) French actress Fanny Ardant has angered Italian politicians by calling the founder of the Red Brigades guerrilla group her ''hero'', prompting calls today for her to stay away from the Venice Film Festival next week.

The 59-year-old star, former partner of director Francois Truffaut, told an Italian magazine this week she admired jailed guerrilla Renato Curcio because, unlike leaders of the 1968 Paris student revolt, he had not abandoned his leftist ideals.

''For me Renato Curcio is a hero. I always considered the Red Brigades phenomenon to be very moving and passionate,'' she told the magazine ''A'' in an interview, adding that Curcio ''didn't become a businessman'' like French leftists of his generation.

Italian conservative politicians were furious. The president of the Veneto region which includes Venice, Giancarlo Galan of the right-wing Forza Italia, asked Ardant to ''do us the favour of not coming to Venice for the upcoming film festival.'' ''Nobody asks an actress to be intelligent or to know about the innumerable tragedies but at least (she should show) respect for victims' families,'' said Christian Democrat Luca Volonte.

''YEARS OF LEAD'' Curcio was a founder of the Marxist urban guerrilla group and was jailed for a series of bombings and kidnappings starting in 1970 that became known as the ''years of lead.'' The band's most notorious act was the kidnap and murder of Christian Democrat leader Aldo Moro in 1978. It was largely disbanded in the 1980s but a modern offshoot carried out an assassination in 2002 and 17 suspects were arrested this year.

Today evening, Ardant apologised in an interview with state television.

''My words have caused suffering to those who have already suffered and for that I ask for forgiveness,'' she said.

For many years Red Brigades members on the run found refuge in France, which declined to extradite them on the argument that the convictions against them were of dubious legality.

But the arrest in Paris this week of former militant Marina Petrella, who was convicted in 1993 of murder and kidnap, raised Rome's hopes that she and others may be extradited.

Ardant is expected next week in Venice as a member of the cast of an Italian movie and appears this year in another about the life of veteran politician Giulio Andreotti.

REUTERS AK BST0036