British actor Warwick Davis dedicated his Bafta film fellowship award to his late wife with an emotional tribute.
Davis, who is known for fantasy film Willow and the Harry Potter movies, received Bafta’s highest honour on Sunday in Royal Festival Hall, London for his performing and advocacy work.
On accepting his award Davis said: “This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me and I’ve been in Star Wars.”
He added that “life has been pretty tough” since losing his wife Samantha aged 53 last March.
“She was always so supportive of my career, encouraging me to grab every opportunity with both hands,” he said.
“Since then life has been pretty tough for me.
“Thanks to the support of our wonderful children I’ve been able to continue working and engaging in life.”
Davis then broke down in tears, while thanking British actor Ralph Fiennes, who played Voldemort in the Harry Potter film series for “helping him to laugh and love again”.
“To anyone out there dreaming of telling their story or creating something meaningful, go for it, the world needs your vision,” he added.
Davis was presented the award by his fellow Harry Potter film series star, Tom Felton.
Felton, who played Draco Malfoy, paid tribute to the actor, recalling that he played professor Filius Flitwick, and helped him pronounce the spell Wingardium Leviosa.
He added that he made “making it feel like fun, not work”, and inspired him, saying “in a world where you can be anything, be yourself”.
A film was shown of his collaborators including Star Wars stars Mark Hamill and George Lucas, and Willow director Ron Howard, along with his two children.
“He’s one of the hardest working men in showbiz,” Hamill said.
Speaking to journalists afterwards in the Winners Room, Davis hinted that he would not rule out starring in the upcoming Harry Potter TV series.
“For the series who knows what that’s going to be in reality,” he said.
“It will be lovely to have some legacy actors in there. I would never say never. I love working.”
Earlier, the 55-year-old told the PA news agency on the red carpet: “I found out last November, I was actually on the toilet reading my emails and received one from Bafta, with a letter attached, saying: ‘You’ve been awarded a fellowship’.
“I was excited but thought ‘hang on, it could be a scam’, so I checked the email address it came from, and it was indeed a Bafta email address.
“Then I got very excited and jumped off the loo and ran around the house telling the kids and the dog.”
Davis, who was born with spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita, a rare bone disorder that results in dwarfism, said he hopes his award is also for his work as an actor as well as his activism.
“If I can have a sneaky bit of this Bafta for my performance work as well my advocacy, I’d be delighted,” he said.
Before becoming one of Britain’s most in-demand actors, Davis got his first break playing a teddy bear-like creature, an Ewok in 1983’s Star Wars Episode VI: Return Of The Jedi at the age of just 11.
This soon led him to take on the starring role in 1988 film Willow, as titular hero Willow Ufgood who takes on a series of adventurers with the help of a swordsman, played by Val Kilmer, to protect a child.
He would return to the role in the 2022 Disney+ series Willow, as Ellie Bamber took on the role of the grown-up version of the child, Elora Danan.
His other fantasy roles include Labyrinth, alongside the late David Bowie as the goblin king, BBC adaptations of CS Lewis’s Narnia books, and Channel 4’s Gulliver’s Travels and the more recent 2013’s Jack The Giant Slayer.
Davis has also been a staple of the horror comedy franchise, the Leprechaun movies, where he starred opposite Friends actress Jennifer Aniston in the first movie.
For more recent audiences, he is known for playing the fastidious charms Professor Filius Flitwick in the Harry Potter film franchise, as well as being in Ricky Gervais’s Extras and also working with Gervais on BBC mockumentary, Life’s Too Short.
He has also hosted game shows Tenable and Celebrity Squares, presented Comic Relief, voiced a character on the Moominvalley TV series, and been part of an hour-long special with adventurer Bear Grylls called Bear’s Mission With Warwick Davis.
Davis has continued to come back for a host of Star Wars movies, where he has played various characters including Wald and Weazel in The Phantom Menace (1999), Wollivan in The Force Awakens (2015), and Wodibin in The Last Jedi (2017).
The actor also runs the talent agency Willow Management, which represents actors under five feet and over seven feet tall, and in 2014 he founded the Reduced Height Theatre Company, to celebrate the talent in the short actor community.
Davis co-founded the dwarfism charity Little People UK with his late wife, Samantha, which offers “friendship and financial support and guidance to people with dwarfism, their families and friends, and helps build a positive future for those individuals”.
In 2017, he was added as a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
His children are Hollyoaks actress Annabelle and Harrison, who appeared as an Ewok in Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise Of Skywalker.
Previous recipients of the fellowship include: Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Sir Alfred Hitchcock, Dame Elizabeth Taylor, Stanley Kubrick, Billy Wilder, Ken Loach, Sir Michael Caine, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Lord Laurence Olivier and Dame Judi Dench.
