The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) is a charity in the United Kingdom that hosts annual awards shows for excellence in film, television, television craft, video games and forms of animation.

The British Film Academy was founded in 1947 by David Lean, Alexander Korda, Carol Reed, Laurence Olivier, Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, Roger Manvell and other leading figures in the British film industry. In 1958, the Academy merged with the Guild of Television Producers and Directors to form the Society of Film and Television Arts, which eventually became the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 1976.

BAFTA is an independent charity with a mission to "support, develop and promote the art forms of the moving image, by identifying and rewarding excellence, inspiring practitioners and benefiting the public". In addition to high-profile awards ceremonies BAFTA runs a year-round programme of educational events including film screenings, tribute evenings, interviews, lectures and debates with leading industry figures. BAFTA is supported by a membership of around 6500 people from the film, television and video game industries. BAFTA's main headquarters is on Piccadilly in London, but it also has branches in Scotland, in Wales, in New York and in Los Angeles.

Julie Walters, CBE (born 22 February 1950 in Smethwick (near Birmingham), Staffordshire) is an English actress and novelist. She came to international prominence in 1983 for Educating Rita, performing in the title role opposite Michael Caine. It was a role she had created on the West End stage and it won her BAFTA and Golden Globe awards for Best Actress. She is best known internationally for her on-screen characterisation of Molly Weasley in seven of the eight Harry Potter films. In 2006, she came fourth in ITV's poll of the public's 50 Greatest Stars in the UK. She is also well known for her collaborations with Victoria Wood, such as appearing in and co-writing with her the award-winning sitcoms Victoria Wood As Seen On TV and Dinnerladies.

Julia Mary Walters was born in Smethwick, West Midlands, very close to Birmingham, to parents Mary Bridget (née O'Brien), a postal clerk of Irish Catholic extraction, and Thomas Walters, a builder and decorator. The youngest of three children and only girl, Walters had an early education at a convent school and later at Holly Lodge Grammar School for Girls on Holly Lane in Smethwick, although she was asked to leave at the end of her lower sixth due to her "high jinks". In an interview with Alison Oddey, Walters said about her early schooling: "I was never going to be academic, so [my mother] suggested that I try teaching or nursing [...] I'd been asked to leave school, so I thought I'd better do it."

Olivia Colman (born Sarah Caroline Colman; 30 January 1974) is a BAFTA nominated English actress, best known for her supporting roles in various comedy shows, such as Sophie Chapman in Peep Show, Alex Smallbone in Rev. and Harriet Schulenburg in Green Wing. She gave a breakthrough performance in the 2011 film Tyrannosaur for which she received outstanding critical acclaim.

Colman was born in Norfolk and educated at two local independent schools: Norwich High School for Girls and Gresham's School in Holt. She went on to Homerton College, Cambridge and spent a term doing a primary school teacher training course. While at Cambridge she first met future co-stars David Mitchell and Robert Webb and "accidentally" auditioned for the Footlights. Eventually she decided to switch to drama and trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

Colman has appeared in roles in numerous comedy films and other BBC, ITV and Channel 4 television programmes such as Bruiser, People Like Us, Look Around You, Black Books, The Office, The Time Of Your Life and provided the voice-over for Five's poll for Britain’s Funniest Comedy Character. She regularly features in BBC Radio 4 comedies, such as Concrete Cow, Think the Unthinkable, The House of Milton Jones, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. She is also the voice of Minka, the Polish secretary in the Radio 4 comedy Hut 33, set in a fictional codebreaking hut of the real-life Bletchley Park during World War II.

Richard Ellef Ayoade ( /aɪ.oʊˈɑːdeɪ/, eye-oh-WA-dee, born 12 June 1977) is a British comedian, actor, writer and director, best known for his role as Maurice Moss in The IT Crowd.

Ayoade was born in Whipps Cross, London, an only child to a Norwegian mother, Dagny (née Baassuik), and a Nigerian father, Layide Ade Laditi Ayoade. Ayoade studied at St. Joseph's College in Ipswich, Suffolk and later studied law at St Catharine's College, Cambridge (1995–1998) where he won the Martin Steele Prize for play production and was president of the Footlights from 1997 to 1998.

While in Footlights, Ayoade acted in and wrote many shows. He and Footlights vice-president John Oliver wrote two pantomimes together: Sleeping Beauty, and Grimm Fairy Tales. Ayoade acted in both Footlights' 1997 and 1998 touring shows: Emotional Baggage and Between a Rock and a Hard Place (directed by Cal McCrystal).

Ayoade co-wrote the stage show Garth Marenghi's Fright Knight with Matthew Holness, whom he also met at the Footlights, appearing in the show at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2000 where it was nominated for a Perrier Award. In 2001 he won the Perrier Comedy Award for co-writing and performing in the sequel to Fright Knight, Garth Marenghi's Netherhead.

Dame Helen Mirren, DBE (born Helen Lydia Mironoff; 26 July 1945) is an English actor. She has won an Academy Award for Best Actress, four SAG Awards, four BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, four Emmy Awards, and two Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Awards.

Mirren was born Helen Lydia Mironoff in Queen Charlotte's Hospital, Chiswick, West London. Her father, Vasiliy Petrovich Mironov (1913–1980), was of Russian origin, and her mother, Kitty (née Kathleen Alexandrina Eva Matilda Rogers; 1909–1996), was English. Mirren's paternal grandfather, Colonel Pyotr Vasilievich Mironov, was in the Tsarist Army and fought in the 1904 Russo-Japanese War. He later became a diplomat, and was negotiating an arms deal in Britain, when he and his family were stranded during the Russian Revolution. The former diplomat became a London cab driver to support his family.

His son, Helen Mirren's father, changed the family name to the Scottish-sounding Mirren in the 1950s and became known as Basil Mirren. He played the viola with the London Philharmonic before World War II, and later drove a cab and was a driving-test examiner, before becoming a civil servant with the Ministry of Transport. Mirren's mother was from West Ham, East London, and was the 13th of 14 children born to a butcher whose father had been the butcher to Queen Victoria. Mirren considers her upbringing to have been "very anti-monarchist".