ON A Bafta night when Marion Cotillard enjoyed a surprise best actress win for her role as Edith Piaf – edging out Julie Christie and Keira Knightley – Daniel Day-Lewis won his second Bafta for There Will Be Blood.
The 50-year-old plays oil baron Daniel Plainview in the film, tipped to scoop an Oscar later this month, having already won a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors’ Guild Award.
The Oscars now look set to go ahead after the Writers’ Guild of America reached a "tentative deal" over an end to strike action.
He beat the likes of James McAvoy for Atonement and George Clooney for Michael Clayton.
Jonathan Ross hosted the ceremony from the Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden.
La Vie En Rose was the night’s big success story, with four awards, also winning gongs for music, costume design and make-up.
The latter was for the remarkable feat of transformation which saw Cotillard play Piaf through her career, from a 19-year-old ingenue to a frail figure who died at 47.
The film’s costume designer, Marit Allen, and composer, Christopher Gunning, were both British. Allen died from a brain aneurysm shortly after finishing La Vie En Rose, aged 66.
Tilda Swinton won best supporting actress for her role as a ruthless corporate lawyer in Michael Clayton. Best British film went to This Is England, Shane Meadows’s semi- autobiographical tale of skinhead culture in the early 1980s, seen through the eyes of a young boy.
Meadows was last nominated in 2005 for Dead Man’s Shoes and joked that he had decided against getting in shape for his red carpet moment.
He told the audience: "Last time I was nominated I took up a regime after Christmas, lots of sit-ups and press-ups and that sort of thing. This year I gave up on that idea and thought I’d go with the man boobs, and it’s turned my luck around."
Meadows dedicated the award to the film’s young star, Thomas Turgoose, who had never acted before landing the part and who was discovered at a youth project in Grimsby for children excluded from school.
"I was quite a naughty boy at his age and my life turned around over 20 years, a very steady progression. I took him from a worse place than I had ever been in and he turned his life around in six weeks," the director said.
Dark thriller No Country For Old Men won best director for brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, and best supporting actor for Spaniard Javier Bardem.
Another French film, The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, won best adapted screenplay for its British writer, Ronald Harwood.
Best original screenplay went to Juno, Diablo Cody’s quirky tale of teenage pregnancy.
Screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh won the Carl Foreman Award for special achievement by a British talent, for Joy Division biopic Control. He dedicated his prize to the late Factory Records boss Tony Wilson.
The Golden Compass, which opened to terrible reviews, won the award for best special visual effects.
Sienna Miller was nominated for the Orange Rising Star award, but lost out to US actor Shia LaBeouf, star of Transformers. and soon to be seen in the new Indiana Jones movie.
Oscar-winning star Sir Anthony Hopkins received the Bafta Fellowship.
The Welsh actor, whose films include The Silence of the Lambs and Remains of the Day, was hailed as "one of the UK’s most loved and admired performers whose contribution to the film industry, both in the UK and abroad, is unrivalled".
Presenters at the ceremony included Kate Hudson, Thandie Newton, Eva Green, Sylvester Stallone, Emily Blunt, Orlando Bloom and Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe.
Full list of winners >>>
