The 52nd BAFTA Film Awards, given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts on 11 April 1999, honoured the best in film for 1998.
Shakespeare in Love won the award for Best Film (also won the Academy Award for Best Picture) and Best Editing. Elizabeth was voted Best British Film. Both Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett won awards for their portrayals of Queen Elizabeth I. Geoffrey Rush won the award for Best Supporting Actor. Italian actor Roberto Benigni won the award for Best Actor in a Leading Role in La vita รจ bella (Life Is Beautiful). He went on to win the Academy Award. Peter Weir, director of The Truman Show, won the BAFTA Film Award for Best Directing.
Famous quotes containing the words british, academy and/or film:
“Why is it we never get our bad medicine in small doses?”
—Edmund H. North, British screenwriter, and Lewis Gilbert. First Sea Lord (Laurence Naismith)
“I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike—and I don’t think there really is a distinction between the two—are always dominated by fools, knaves, charlatans and bureaucrats. And that being the case, any human being, male or female, of whatever status, who has a voice of her or his own, is not going to be liked.”
—Harold Bloom (b. 1930)
“Television does not dominate or insist, as movies do. It is not sensational, but taken for granted. Insistence would destroy it, for its message is so dire that it relies on being the background drone that counters silence. For most of us, it is something turned on and off as we would the light. It is a service, not a luxury or a thing of choice.”
—David Thomson, U.S. film historian. America in the Dark: The Impact of Hollywood Films on American Culture, ch. 8, William Morrow (1977)