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Oppenheimer was the biggest film at the Bafta Awards 2024, and Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., and director Christopher Nolan were all recognised for their contributions.
The Bafta Awards 2024 winners have been revealed, and Oppenheimer took home seven prizes.
For his portrayal of J Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, Murphy was awarded best actor, and Oscar for best supporting actor went to Downey Jr.
Seven Bafta Awards 2024 were won by the drama, including best film. Poor Things took home five, with Emma Stone winning best actress.
Da’Vine Joy Randolph won Best Supporting Actress for The Holdovers.
Though Oscar and Bafta voters rarely completely agree, Oppenheimer and the acting winners might be able to duplicate their victories at the Oscars in three weeks.
Michael J. Fox made an unexpected cameo to declare Oppenheimer the winner of the highest prize at the presentation on Sunday—best film. The 62-year-old received a standing ovation from the audience despite having Parkinson’s disease for more than 30 years..
Following his first-ever Bafta award 2024, Murphy said to the ceremony, “Oh boy.” Wow, such a blessing. Many thanks for everything, Bafta.”
The Irish actor thanked Nolan and said, “Thank you for always pushing me and demanding perfection because that is what you deliver time and time again.” He also paid respect to his “Oppenhomies.”
It was also the British director’s first Bafta victory after a career that included The Dark Knight, Inception, and Dunkirk.
Thanking the “peerless and fearless Cillian Murphy” and the film’s backers “for taking on something dark,” Nolan also expressed gratitude to the cast.
The 1993 picture Chaplin won Downey Jr.’s first Bafta, which came 31 years afterward, setting a new record for the longest time between wins by any performer.
After portraying Tony Stark/Iron Man in several Marvel movies, the actor portrayed Oppenheimer’s enemy Lewis Strauss.
“Recently that dude suggested I attempt a subtle approach as a last-ditch effort to resurrect my declining credibility,” he added, praising Nolan.
The most winning movies from the Bafta Awards 2024
Oppenheimer wins seven
Poor Things
The Zone of Interest
The Holdovers
In the steampunk fantasy film Poor Things, Stone won a second career Bafta Award 2024 for her performance as a British woman who is reanimated after receiving a baby’s brain.
In the meantime, Randolph received recognition for her performance as Mary, the heartbroken mother and head of the school kitchen in The Holdovers, a film about the faculty and students who spend the Christmas season in 1970 at a US boarding school.
During her victory speech, she broke down in tears as she mentioned the “countless Marys all through history, who have never got a chance to wear an elegant gown and stand on this stage in London”.
The American actress continued, saying, “Telling her story is a responsibility that I do not take lightly.” Best Casting was also won by The Holdovers.
For the second year running, no British actor took home any of the four acting awards on the most esteemed night in the British film industry’s calendar.
The Zone of Interest, which tells the story of a family who lived close to Auschwitz during World War Two and the commander of a concentration camp, won the best British film prize.
The drama, directed by British filmmaker Jonathan Glazer, was also awarded best sound and best picture not in the English language. It was filmed in Poland and starred primarily in German.
Concurrently, the renowned animator Hayao Miyazaki’s film The Boy and the Heron became the first Japanese production to win best animated film.
The two best screenplay prizes went to American Fiction, a comedy about a US novelist who is shocked when his parody of the “black genre” of novels becomes an international smash, and the thrilling French courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall.
In her acceptance speech, Samantha Morton dedicated her Bafta Fellowship—the highest honor bestowed by the organization—to all foster children, saying, “I dedicate this award to every child in care, or child who has been in care and who didn’t survive.”
Morton was raised in Nottingham’s foster system.
In his opening monologue, former Doctor Who star David Tennant made fun of the box office hit Barbie and said, “This is going to go smoother than Ken’s chest.” Tennant was dressed in a kilt and hosted the ceremony.
But things didn’t work out for Barbie, which was the most popular box office movie of the previous year and had five Bafta nominations, but didn’t win any prizes.
Other movies that received several nominations but didn’t win that evening were Saltburn, Maestro, All of Us Strangers, and Killers of the Flower Moon.
Among the performers was Sophie Ellis-Bextor, who carried on the incredible comeback of her 2001 hit song Murder on the Dancefloor, which had been the soundtrack to a sequence in Saltburn featuring Barry Keoghan dancing around a stately home while nude.
The dancers were meant to resemble affluent partygoers, a reference to the movie, although they were all fully clothed.
The president of Bafta, the Prince of Wales, attended the event among Hollywood celebrities, marking his first prominent royal engagement following his wife Kate’s recent surgery
