09/12/2002

On 2 December veteran British actor, Sir John Mills was made a Fellow of the British Academy of Film & Television Arts (BAFTA, the highest accolade the institution can bestow upon an individual in recognition of their outstanding contribution to world cinema.
Sir John, 90, thus joins past winners like Charles Chaplin, Steven Spielberg, Sean Connery and Stanley Kubrick – to mention just a few.
The Fellowship was presented by Bafta President, Lord Richard Attenborough, who said, “Sir John is a uniquely dominant figure in the history of British cinema and he has been my closest friend for 60 years.”
Sir John Mills was born in 1908 and began his acting career in the 1930s. His most memorable films include Good Bye Mr Chips(1939), Great Expectations (1946), Ryan’s Daughter (1970) which won him the Oscar for best supporting actor and, more recently, Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet (1996) and The Gentleman Thief (2001).