Jude Law receives BIFA 'Variety' award

Jude Law was the man of the hour at the 15th annual British Independent Film Awards in London over the weekend.

The "Anna Karenina" actor was honored with the "Variety" prize for promoting British film overseas.

Before the big event the star explained why evenings such as this are important:

"British film is a fantastic and important industry and this year more than ever because there are a lot of talks about art education being cut out of school syllabus and this is a celebration of all things good about the cultural industries and let's not ruin it's future by stopping kids having fair and free artistic education," he explained.

Hosting the show for the 7th time was actor James Nesbitt, who was fresh from his "Hobbit" duties. He worried he had bitten off a bit more than he could chew:

"Stupidly I have decided to do a song, which I have done a few times before. I am still writing it, I am changing the words to an old standard. Why I do this I have no idea, I haven't remembered the songs once in rehearsals so hopefully I will get it," he laughed.

Also on the red carpet was Andrea Riseborough, who took home the best actress award for her performance in the gritty "Shadow Dancer," opposite Clive Owen. She beat out Dame Judi Dench ("The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"), Meryl Streep ("The Iron Lady"), Alice Lowe ("Sightseers") and Elle Fanning ("Ginger and Rosa") in the best actress category.

"I think that now after I've done 'Ginger and Rosa,' I had to do the accent and I had never really spent that much time in London before, so after spending time in London and getting immersed, it opened my eyes to it and I've wanted to watch more and look things up," said a giggly Fanning on the red carpet.

Jury chair, producer Alison Owen, picked this year's winners, along with producer Iain Canning, actor Tom Hiddleston, actress Christine Bottomley and writer Adrian Hodges.

"That is the thing, they were all amazing. That is the hard thing, deciding between very very different pieces of art which is the best one. I think actually with art, nobody is the best. Unless it is a running race and you can definitively say Usain Bolt is the fastest man at the 100m because he finished first, it is a bit different. But all of the films were so good this year," said Hiddleston.

Tim Roth was nominated for best actor for "Broken," but the award went to Toby Jones for his dark comedy "Berberian Sound Studio."

"It's great, it is particularly surprising because it hasn't been released yet, so you're unaware that anyone has actually seen it and for all of these nominations to come through obviously people have seen it. What it will do, when it does finally come out which I believe is in this Spring, hopefully there will be some momentum behind it because that is the one thing that you need with these small British films is that you need other people to be talking about them rather than just the film's PR bods," said Roth before the ceremony.

"Berberian Sound Studio" became the evening's big winner with awards for achievement in production, best technical achievement and a best director trophy for Peter Strickland.

Sir Michael Gambon was also honored for outstanding contribution by an actor to British film.