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THEORANGEBRITISH
THEORANGEBRITISH
ACADEMYFILMAWARDS
ACADEMYFILMAWARDS
Awards & Events
Though no single film dominat- ed this year’s Orange British Academy Film Awards, the big winner at the Odeon Leicester Square had to be the evening’s smallest, and youngest, contender, Billy Elliot’s 14-year-old Jamie Bell.
The youthful Teesider, now back at school concentrating on GCSEs follow- ing his remarkable film debut in the home-grown box office hit, beat off four of filmland’s adult finest – Michael Douglas, Russell Crowe, Tom Hanks and Geoffrey Rush – for the coveted Best Actor award.
It was just the kind of headline- worthy ‘scoop’ needed to underscore BAFTA’s bold decision to move the awards ahead of the Oscars – and a sweet success for Bell following his sur- prising failure to secure even a nomina- tion at the Hollywood event held later this month.
Billy Elliot earned Julie Walters a Best Supporting Actress award – “human rights were violated,” she quipped about the onerous choreogra- phy - and also won The Alexander Korda Award for Outstanding British Film Of The Year.
Best Film went to Gladiator, anoth- er offering with a strong British contri- bution either side of the camera, and Ridley Scott’s Roman epic added anoth- er three BAFTAs making it the event’s joint winner with Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon which also netted a quartet of masks. Lee repeated last year’s double by Pedro Almodovar of Best Director and Best Foreign Language Film for his martial arts magic.
Gladiator also pipped Billy Elliot as well as What Lies Beneath, Chicken Run, Mission: Impossible 2, Stuart
Albert Finney, recipient of the Academy Fellowship, with Stephen Fry
winner – fortysomething Polish writer- director Pawel Pawlikowski, best known for offbeat documentaries.
Last Resort, his brilliant but bleak new feature about asylum-seeking, was unveiled to the public for the first time a fortnight after the BAFTAs.
“It’s thrilling to be valued by your peers,” beamed top casting director Mary Selway after being presented The Michael Balcon Award for Outstanding British Contribution To Cinema. There were on-screen testimonials by Ralph Fiennes, Sydney Pollack, George Lucas, John Hurt and Richard E Grant for Selway, whose four-decade career includes films like Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Out Of Africa, Withnail & I, Notting Hill and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.
Now in his fifth decade of screen, stage and TV acting, Albert Finney, a Best Supporting Actor nominee for Erin Brockovich, received a BAFTA Fellowship from fellow thesp Dame Maggie Smith.
Ruling the evening with a rod of gossamer and many big laughs – including his hilarious commentary later for bus passengers en route to the awards’ feast at the Grosvenor House – was the event’s host, actor-writer Stephen Fry.
Guest presenters included Tom Hanks, Christina Ricci, Sir Elton John, Goldie Hawn, Rachel Weisz, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant, Hilary Swank, Annette Bening, Roger Moore, Thandie Newton, Ioan Gruffud, Geoffrey Rush, Robert Altman, Jimi Mistry, Amanda Donohoe and Hugh Laurie.
The event, held on Sunday, February 25, was presented live on Sky One with edited highlights the follow- ing night on BBC1. ■ Quentin Falk
Little, Charlie’s Angels, X-Men, Dinosaur and The Grinch to the Orange Audience Award which attracted a total of over 100,000 votes.
Apart from Jamie Bell, who might also have been reason-
ably vying alongside his nomi- nated director Stephen Daldry and screenwriter Lee Hall for The Carl Foreman Award for Outstanding Newcomer in British Film, the night’s only other shock was that eventual
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