Hollywood stars and British royalty were gathering Sunday in London for the British Academy Film Awards, where The Favourite is living up to its name and leading the race for trophies.
Yorgos Lanthimos’ royal tragicomedy has 12 nominations, including best picture, for the U.K. equivalent of the Oscars. Olivia Colman already won a Golden Globe for her performance as Queen Anne in The Favourite and is favoured to take the best-actress prize.
The 18th-century queen’s distant relative, Prince William, and his wife, Kate, were joining Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Viola Davis and other stars for a black-tie ceremony at London’s Royal Albert Hall.
Absolutely Fabulous star Joanna Lumley is the host.
The Favourite actress Cate Blanchett poses for photographers upon arrival at the BAFTA awards in London on Sunday. (Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)
Front-runners for the prizes include the Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, lunar drama First Man, autobiographical Mexican story Roma and musical melodrama A Star Is Born. Each film has seven nominations.
The awards, known as BAFTAs, will be scoured for clues to who might triumph at Hollywood’s Academy Awards on Feb. 24, in what’s shaping up as an unpredictable awards season.
Colman is up against Glenn Close, who took Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe awards for The Wife. The other best-actress nominees are Lady Gaga for A Star is Born, Viola Davis for Widows and Melissa McCarthy for Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Viola Davis is up for best-actress for her performance in Widows. (Henry Nicholls/Reuters)
“I feel like I’m in a fever dream,” said McCarthy, of recognition for the offbeat film, based on the story of a real literary forger.
Her Can You Ever Forgive Me? co-star Richard E. Grant has secured both BAFTA and Oscar nominations for his performance as an affable rogue.
“I’ve been working for 40 years, I’ve never won anything,” said Grant, who called this awards season “the ride of my lifetime.”
Best-actor contenders are Bradley Cooper for A Star is Born, Christian Bale for Vice, Rami Malek for Bohemian Rhapsody, Viggo Mortensen for Green Book and Steve Coogan for Stan and Ollie.
Actor Viggo Mortensen is a best-actor contender for his role in Green Book. (Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)
Best-picture nominees are The Favourite, Roma, A Star is Born and two very different movies about racism in America: Green Book and BlacKkKlansman.
Nominees for best British film — a separate category — are Channel Islands thriller Beast, The Favourite, Bohemian Rhapsody, fashion documentary McQueen, Laurel and Hardy biopic Stan and Ollie and crime thriller You Were Never Really Here.
British academy voters have all but ignored superhero blockbuster Black Panther, which is up for best picture at the Oscars and took top prize at the SAG awards last month. It has a single BAFTA nomination — for visual effects.
Spotlight on abuse in industry
The red carpet glamour is unfolding against a backdrop of soul-searching and scandal about abuses in the entertainment industry.
Last week, the British academy suspended director Bryan Singer’s nomination as part of the team behind Bohemian Rhapsody after four men accused him of sexually assaulting them when they were minors.
BAFTA said the alleged abuse was “completely unacceptable” and incompatible with its values. Singer, who was fired while Bohemian Rhapsody was in mid-production in 2017, denies the allegations. The film itself is still nominated.
At last year’s BAFTAs ceremony, many women wore black as a symbol of opposition to harassment, abuse and inequality in the wake of allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.
Female representation up, still lagging
A British wing of the Time’s Up campaign founded last year is vowing to keep the campaign going and to double the number of women in film, on and offscreen.
The number of female nominees is up this year, but there has been criticism of the academy’s failure to nominate any female filmmakers in the best-director category. Only one woman has ever won the directing prize: Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker in 2010.
BAFTA chair Pippa Harris said only 10 per cent of films entered for the awards were directed by women.
“It needs to be 50 per cent,” said Harris, who called the gender imbalance an industry-wide problem.
“There has been a traditional problem with getting females to be noticed in terms of their TV work and then get picked up to make feature films,” she said. “Men seem to find that transition much easier.”