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:
“There is not a more disgusting spectacle under the sun than our subserviency to British criticism. It is disgusting, first, because it is truckling, servile, pusillanimous—secondly, because of its gross irrationality. We know the British to bear us little but ill will—we know that, in no case do they utter unbiased opinions of American books ... we know all this, and yet, day after day, submit our necks to the degrading yoke of the crudest opinion that emanates from the fatherland.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
“The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created.”
—bell hooks (b. c. 1955)
“I’ll be right here.”
—Melissa Mathison, U.S. screenwriter, and Steven Spielberg. ET, ET The Extra-Terrestrial, saying goodbye to Elliot as he touches Elliot’s forehead—ET’s final words in the film (1982)