A night of glamour and the best of British, the BAFTAs made its annual return to the London Royal Festival Hall on Sunday night to celebrate an evening of the most outstanding contributions to the film industry.
Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, the biopic of the man who made the first atomic bomb, took home seven out its 11 nominations, including Best Film, Best Picture, Best Director and Best Leading Actor, which actor Cillian Murphy won.
While much focus remained on the big titles winners, which also included Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things and Jonathan Glazer's The Zone Of Interest, actor Samantha Morton's moving acceptance speech for her BAFTA Fellowship award win stole the hearts of viewers everywhere.
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Taking home perhaps the most coveted award there is to win out of the entire event, individuals are presented with the Lifetime Achievement gong for 'outstanding achievement in the art forms of the moving image'.
Since its creation in 1971 when it was first won by Alfred Hitchcock (posthumously), it has been awarded to the likes of Sir Charles Chaplin (who also won posthumously), David Attenborough CBE, Steven Spielberg and Dame Judi Dench.
The 46-year-old English actor and director first found success when she was cast in Sweet And Lowdon and then Speilberg's Minority Report alongside Tom Cruise in 2002. She has since gone on to feature in major films such as In America, The Messenger and season 10 of the hit HBO show The Walking Dead.
Although the actor has enjoyed a hugely successful career, she narrowly escaped a distressing childhood shrouded in child neglect and the foster homes. According to an 2009 interview with the Guardian, her 15-year-old babysitter became pregnant with Morton's father, her parents split up and her mother moved in with a violent alcoholic. During this time, a young Morton lived with her father until she was eight years old, then went into the foster care system and stayed there for the next nine years.
Having been 'saved by acting', the star dedicated her BAFTA award to 'every child in care, or who has been in care and who didn't survive'.
During her speech the actor recalled how watching Ken Loach's Kess saved her. 'Seeing poverty and people like me, my life and my family on the screen, I recognised myself. See representation matters.'
An advocate for many causes including children in care homes, in 2008, Morton directed her first film The Unloved, a semi-autobiographical drama. Further on in her speech, she went on to emphasise the importance of creating such films.
'As much as anything, it was what I wanted to tell little Sam. Homeless and cold, hungry and alone, that you'll have a family one day and you'll have a life beyond what the government statistics have laid out for you because you matter, so don't give up,' she explained.
'You see the stories we tell, they actually have the power to change people's lives. Film changed my life. It transformed me and it led me here today.'
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