Robert Aramayo delivered the BAFTA Film Awards’ biggest acting surprise, winning leading actor for I Swear and then returning to the stage earlier in the night to collect the public-voted EE Rising Star prize, a double that jolted the late-stage awards conversation.
Aramayo beat a field packed with established contenders, including Timothée Chalamet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael B. Jordan, Ethan Hawke and Jesse Plemons. He accepted the leading actor trophy in tears, saying, “I absolutely can’t believe it,” and told the room he couldn’t process standing “in the same category” as the nominees he admired.
The win spotlights I Swear, a Scottish biographical drama built around John Davidson, a Tourette syndrome campaigner who attended the ceremony and received a shout-out from Aramayo during the Rising Star acceptance. “John Davidson is the most remarkable man I’ve ever met,” Aramayo said, praising his commitment to education around the condition.
BAFTA’s press office said I Swear also won the casting award, reinforcing the sense that voters rallied around a homegrown film anchored by a performance that required tight technical control and emotional restraint. That support arrived on a night dominated elsewhere by Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, which won best film and collected six prizes.
The result complicates a best-actor season that many observers had treated as settled, while highlighting the gap between BAFTA’s voting body and the Academy’s. An Australian public broadcaster noted that Aramayo is not among the Oscar nominees in the category, which limits any direct carryover to the Academy’s ballot even as the BAFTA moment fuels fresh attention for him and for I Swear.
