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 è 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:
“Among the virtues and vices that make up the British character, we have one vice, at least, that Americans ought to view with sympathy. For they appear to be the only people who share it with us. I mean our worship of the antique. I do not refer to beauty or even historical association. I refer to age, to a quantity of years.”
—William Golding (b. 1911)
“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)
“Is America a land of God where saints abide for ever? Where golden fields spread fair and broad, where flows the crystal river? Certainly not flush with saints, and a good thing, too, for the saints sent buzzing into man’s ken now are but poor- mouthed ecclesiastical film stars and cliché-shouting publicity agents.
Their little knowledge bringing them nearer to their ignorance,
Ignorance bringing them nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)