Bafta winners 2010: Carey Mulligan and Colin Firth among winners

By Anita Singh, Showbusiness Editor Published: 2:50PM GMT twenty-two February 2010

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Mulligan won the majority appropriate singer endowment for her opening as an Oxford-bound schoolgirl seduced by an comparison man in An Education.

"I unequivocally didnt design this at all. I was here a year ago and I usually never illusory this in a million years," pronounced the gay 24-year-old, fluttering to her relatives and hermit in the Royal Opera House auditorium.

Bafta endowment winners Carey Mulligan wins Best Actress Bafta Carey Mulligan on the red runner Prince William"s Bafta entrance Bafta winners 2010: the big winners Carey Mulligan manners the red runner at the Baftas

Firth won his initial Bafta for A Single Man, in that he plays a lamentation university professor.

Avatar, the 3-D fantasy that has steamrollered the approach in to the jot down books by apropos the majority successful movie of all time, was approaching to browbeat the ceremony. However, it won usually dual teenager awards.

Instead, Bafta electorate handed 6 prizes to The Hurt Locker, a play about a US explosve ordering section in Iraq. Its transport enclosed majority appropriate movie and majority appropriate executive for Kathryn Bigelow, who becomes the initial lady in Bafta story to take the prize. She is the former mother of James Cameron, who cheered her on from the audience.

While the likes of Kate Winslet and Joely Richardson acted on the red carpet, it was Prince William who lifted the greatest screams from the crowds as he over his initial central rendezvous as the new boss of Bafta.

The Prince succeeded Lord Attenborough and follows his grandfather, the Duke of Edinburgh, who was Baftas initial boss from 1959-1965. Earl Mountbatten of Burma and the Princess Royal have additionally hold the role.

The Prince was there to benefaction a Bafta Fellowship to Vanessa Redgrave, who set in reserve her Republican leanings for the occasion. She bestowed a lick on the Prince and told him: "I would to contend to Your Royal Highness how most I admire your father for his intelligence, huminity and kindness."

News that Redgrave was to accept an endowment from Prince William lifted eyebrows. The singer was a heading light in the Marxist Workers Revolutionary Party in the 1970s, and has a lane jot down of creation argumentative speeches at awards ceremonies. When she won the majority appropriate ancillary singer Oscar in 1977 for Julia, she used her debate to malign the "Zionist hoodlums" who had criticised her await for the Palestinian cause.

The 73-year-old actress, a part of of the Redgrave dynasty, was accompanied to the rite by her daughter, Joely Richardson. Last year the family suffered tragedy when Joelys sister, Natasha Richardson, died in a skiing accident.

In a debate to the assembly at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, he pronounced that the British humanities were abounding in the "second Elizabeth age".

Britain has been a universe personality "from the days of Shakespeare to the own Shakespeare In Love", he said, with anxiety to the Oscar-winning film.

A peek at the Bafta shortlist done it transparent "that the same unusual informative impetus that so infused the initial Elizabethan age still drives the violence heart of British visible humanities in this second Elizabethan era".

All eyes at the rite were on Mulligan, who will be anticipating to repeat her success at the Oscars subsequent month.

The newly blonde Mulligan won conform plaudits for her monochrome, flower-print skirt by Vionnet. She incited the dusk in to a family affair, brining her relatives and hermit to the ceremony. She likened the shock of her nominations to "being punched nicely".

Other actresses who done superb conform choices enclosed Vera Farmiga in Marchesa, a profound Ann-Marie Duff in carmine Alberta Ferretti, Kate Winslet in sticking Stella McCartney and Audrey Tautou, who was nominated for her opening in a biopic of Coco Chanel but opted to wear Lanvin.

Jonathan Ross hosted the eventuality for the fourth year and the rite finished with the Bafta Fellowship Award.