SOME OF Britain’s brightest showbiz stars were out in force for Saturday’s 2013 Britannia Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
A handful of stars were honored at the event – including George Clooney, Benedict Cumberbatch, Sir Ben Kingsley and Idris Elba – but stealing the show, to nobody’s great surprise, was Sacha Baron Cohen, who stunned the star-studded audience (which included the British Weekly’s own Craig Young), by ‘accidentally’ pushing an old woman in a wheelchair off the stage.
The Borat star was invited on stage to accept the Charlie Chaplin Britannia Award for Excellence in Comedy. The introduction came from the delicious Salma Hayek, who brought along Grace Collington, 87, to help her present the award to Cohen, describing her as ‘the oldest surviving actor to have worked with Chaplin in a silent movie’.
Collington then gave Cohen one of Chaplin’s famous canes.
The comedian broke into a dance similar to the famous Chaplin routine before stumbling and pushing the wheelchair off the stage with Grace landing face first on the floor below.
Thankfully the whole thing was just one more of Cohen’s famous (or infamous) pranks.
Cohen told the audience: ‘Grace Collington is the oldest, sorry, was the oldest… I dedicate my award to her. It’s obviously a tragedy but on the bright side what a great way to go.
‘She’ll probably make the Oscars In Memoriam section… Anyway tonight is not about her, it’s about me.’
The other honorees played it straight, with Ben Kingsley telling the audience: “I really am overwhelmed. I’m not just pretending I am,” and dedicated his Albert R. Broccoli Award for Worldwide Contribution to Entertainment to young actors. “Know that to tell a story is to heal someone somewhere, and know that your vulnerability is your greatest strength,” he urged.
Accepting his award for British Actor of the Year, the ubiquitous Benedict Cumberbatch said he was “quite flabbergasted,” and thanked his parents, both actors, for their support. “(The award) will end up on my mum’s mantelpiece,” he said. “She’s a very strong-willed woman.”
Idris Elba was honored with the Britannia Humanitarian Award, by Nelson Mandela’s daughter, Zindzi, who flew in from South Africa and praised by his portrayal in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, and noting that both men share “a passion for the human spirit.”
By the time the night wound down, the spotlight shined on Roberts, who presented Clooney with the Stanley Kubrick Award for Excellence in Film.
“I rather famously don’t have children,” Clooney said, to laughter, “but I do have a family. And it’s a family of actors and directors and of writers, and, God forbid, agents, and studios and journalists. People who love what they do.”
