Who Won A BAFTA For His Performance In Brideshead Revisited?

Although some critics thought the award should have gone to Jeremy Irons, who played the main character, in fact the BAFTA for best actor in 1981 went to Anthony Andrews. He played Lord Sebastian Flyte, the unstable younger son of Lord and Lady Marchmain. Both in the source novel and the TV series, Sebastian is portrayed as a sensitive nad deeply unhappy character, who deals with the pressures imposed by his mother's kindly interference (a devout Catholic, she tries to arrange his friendships and keep him under supervision) and his own, increasingly obvious homosexuality by drinking heavily and reatreating into childishness. Later, to escape from "Mummy" and adult life generally, Sebastian wanders around Europe, still drinking. He finds some companionship with an opportunistic young German, but when his money runs out Kurt disappears, and Sebastian, now ill with TB, spends hid dying years in a monastery as a lay brother, having returned to the faith of his childhood.