After last year’s best leading actor win for portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, actor vying again for title with The Danish Girl role
On-screen couple Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander have both been nominated for Baftas for their roles in transgender movie The Danish Girl.
The nominations were announced yesterday by TV personality Stephen Fry and actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw at Bafta’s central London headquarters in Piccadilly.
Redmayne will go up against Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael Fassbender, Matt Damon and Bryan Cranston in the leading actor award category, while Vikander will face competition from Cate Blanchett, Brie Larson, Dame Maggie Smith and Saoirse Ronan in the leading actress category.
Redmayne is also an early favourite to secure an Oscar nomination for his role in The Danish Girl as Lili Elbe, one of the first known transgender women to receive sex reassignment surgery. He has already been nominated for a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award for the movie.
Bridge of Spies and Carol lead the nominations with nine nods each
The London-born actor will be hoping to reprise his success at last year’s British Academy Film Awards, which saw him winning the best actor gong for his role as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything.
Vikander has also been nominated in the supporting actress category for her role in Ex Machina.
Blanchett has been widely praised by critics for her role in Carol, an adaptation of a Patricia Highsmith novel which documents the love story between Blanchett’s character, a wealthy, married socialite and Rooney Mara’s character, a young woman working in a department store.
The Baftas, which are seen as a good indicator of who will achieve Oscar success, will be handed out on February 14, at a star-studded ceremony at London’s Royal Opera House.
The films leading the nominations with a total of nine nods each are Bridge of Spies and Carol. Star Wars: The Force Awakens has been nominated in four categories.
British director Ridley Scott will be hoping for his first Bafta win in the director category after being nominated for The Martian. He will be up against Steven Spielberg (Bridge of Spies), Adam McKay (The Big Short), Todd Haynes (Carol) and Alejandro Iñárritu (The Revenant).
Kate Winslet and Rooney Mara will battle it out in the supporting actress category, ending speculation that Mara would be up for the leading actress category alongside her co-star Blanchett. Other actresses vying to win the category will be Jennifer Jason Leigh (The Hateful Eight), Julie Walters (Brooklyn) and Vikander (Ex Machina).
The Bafta EE Rising Star winner will also be announced on the night. The award recognises up and coming talent in the film world and the five nominees have already been announced.
Star Wars actor John Boyega is among the nominees, and other stars nominated include Fifty Shades of Grey’s Dakota Johnson, Welsh actor Taron Egerton, Brie Larson and Hammersmith-born Bel Powley, who starred in coming-of-age drama The Diary of a Teenage Girl in 2015.
The documentary on late singer Amy Winehouse, titled Amy, has been nominated for outstanding British film as well as in the documentary category.
Brooklyn, which has picked up six nominations in total, is also nominated for outstanding British film alongside 45 Years, The Danish Girl, Ex Machina and The Lobster.