Robert Aramayo Wins BAFTA Leading Actor Award for I Swear
Robert Aramayo has won the BAFTA leading actor award for I Swear, and he became the first person to win that prize and the BAFTA Rising Star Award on the same night, Variety reported.
He beat Timothée Chalamet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ethan Hawke, Michael B. Jordan and Jesse Plemons in the leading actor category. The film, a biographical drama by Kirk Jones, received five nominations at the 79th BAFTA Film Awards. It follows John Davidson, a Scottish campaigner who lives with Tourette's, a condition that causes sudden, involuntary movements and sounds known as tics.
Aramayo is from Hull, in East Yorkshire. The film reached US cinemas on April 24, when Sony Pictures Classics opened it there.
The evening was also marked by a painful moment on the broadcast. Davidson's involuntary tics, which included a racial slur, were heard while Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo were presenting. BAFTA apologised to the presenters. The BBC, which broadcast the show in the United Kingdom, also apologised for airing the slur, and the PBS NewsHour reported that both organisations apologised on the Monday after the Sunday ceremony.
Davidson, who served as an executive producer on I Swear and attended the ceremony, left on his own in the second half of the show. He told Variety afterwards that he felt "a wave of shame." Tourette Scotland and Tourette's Action, two charities linked to the film, were part of its public work around the release.
Alan Cumming, who hosted the ceremony, criticised BAFTA in May over the outburst. He also said he would not host the awards ceremony again.
For many viewers, the story is two things at once: a first-time double win for an actor, and a broadcast moment that involved a condition many people know little about. Davidson's tics are part of the condition he has campaigned on, and the film was built around that life. Aramayo's win and the apology both came from the same night, and both are now part of the record of the 79th BAFTA Film Awards.
