Given a knighthood in 1998, Sir Elton has been made a “Companion of Honour” – a special award only held by 65 people at any one time – for his achievements in music and extensive charity work.

Newton-John, the Grease star and health campaigner who moved from the UK to Australia with her family as a five-year-old, said she was “extremely excited, honoured and grateful beyond words” to be awarded a damehood.

However, there are always some who choose not to accept a prestigious title. A number of well-known individuals have refused an honour for a variety of reasons, whether political, personal, or because they did not feel it was appropriate given their line of work.

The best films of 2019 Show all 20 1 /20 The best films of 2019 The best films of 2019 20. Minding the Gap One of the year’s biggest cinematic curveballs occurs at the midway point of this stirring documentary. Billed as a film about small-town US skate culture, Bing Liu’s Minding the Gap grows into a haunting depiction of class and masculinity, and how once inseparable groups of friends tend to untangle and diverge as they come of age. Few of 2019’s films cast quite as long a shadow. Adam White Hulu The best films of 2019 19. The Farewell The Farewell rips your heart out of your chest. Then it hands it back to you, wrapped gently in cotton wool. Director Lulu Wang loosely adapts a chapter in her own life, as we follow a young woman (Awkwafina) travelling back to China to say goodbye to her terminally ill grandmother. Delving into all the intricacies of immigrant identity and family politics, it’s a comedy of warmth and bracing honesty. Clarisse Loughrey A24 The best films of 2019 18. Us An opportunity for Jordan Peele to cement his status as one of horror’s modern maestros, Us reels us in with old-fashioned thrills. Then it leaves us with the terrible dread of realising we’ve been looking into a mirror this whole time. Lupita Nyong'o delivers two of this year’s best performances in one film, both as our hero and as her sinister doppelgänger – one of an army of “Tethereds” that emerge from underground seeking vengeance. Clarisse Loughrey Universal Pictures The best films of 2019 17. Pain & Glory All of Pedro Almodovar’s films feel autobiographical in one way or another, but Pain & Glory couldn’t be more lived-in if he stepped out in front of the camera to introduce every scene. A lushly romantic ode to cinema, shared history and cruelly interrupted love, it features a career-best performance from Antonio Banderas – Zorro at his most tender and vulnerable. Adam White Sony Pictures The best films of 2019 16. Vox Lux Vox Lux is 2019’s most damning filmic portrait of American culture. We begin with a teenage girl (Raffey Cassidy), who survives a school shooting and ends up a pop star. As an adult, she’s played by a breezy, vicious Natalie Portman. Her strut is one part Sia, two parts Lady Gaga. It’s an ugly, despairing film that comes gift-wrapped in sequins, presenting art as the cavernous pit we throw our traumas into. Clarisse Loughrey Neon The best films of 2019 15. Under the Silver Lake A paranoid puzzle box of a mystery, Under the Silver Lake is far more interested in the directions down the rabbit hole than allowing star Andrew Garfield to crawl his way out of it. That’s also the most pleasurable aspect of David Robert Mitchell’s film, a sunny LA noir which is sinister, hilarious and (potentially ruinously) male. It’s probably 2019’s most polarising film, adored and reviled in equal measure, but undeniably a work of striking creative autonomy. Adam White Mubi The best films of 2019 14. High Life High Life has its silly sub-Barbarella moments (Juliette Binoche testing out the spaceship’s very own orgasmatron machine) and clearly wasn’t made on a Hollywood budget. Nonetheless, veteran French auteur Claire Denis’s first English language film is a typically provocative and subversive affair. Binoche plays Dr Dibs, a scientist on board a ship full of criminals and trying to harvest healthy foetuses. Geoffrey Macnab A24 The best films of 2019 13. Ad Astra Ad Astra is a space movie with an Oedipal undertow. Brad Pitt gives a fine, understated performance as the introspective astronaut trying to save the world and find his father at the same time. Writer-director James Gray throws in references to Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now. This is a slow-moving but beguiling film with an unexpected emotional kick. Geoffrey Macnab Fox The best films of 2019 12. Happy as Lazzaro A bee keeper’s daughter, Italian director Alice Rohrwacher is one of European cinema’s visionary young talents. Happy As Lazzaro, her best film yet, is a magical realist fable that combines hard-hitting social comment about the exploitation of rural workers with flights of astonishing lyricism. The film also has one of the best performances of the year from newcomer Adriano Tardiolo, an 18-year-old economics student who plays the holy innocent, Lazzaro, with an ingenuousness which rekindles memories of Peter Sellers in Being There. Geoffrey Macnab Simona Pampallona/Netflix The best films of 2019 11. Burning Based on a Haruki Murakami’s short story, Burning – from South Korean maestro Lee Chang-dong – is a meditation on dealing with isolation and the tricks being alone might play on your memory. Jong-su (Ah-in Yoo) is forced to play detective when Steven Yeun’s affluent bachelor rolls into town – an event that coincides with the disappearance of a schoolfriend. Burning is a searing drama whose central unanswered mystery unnerves long after the credits role. Jacob Stolworthy Thunderbird Releasing The best films of 2019 10. For Sama News coverage has hardly been short of harrowing, violent footage of the Syrian Civil War. But too often missing are the human moments inbetween the bombings and the bloodshed. In Waad Al-Kateab’s first person account of the uprising’s aftermath, her camera’s gaze never flinches from the horrors it sees – as she and her husband try to maintain a rebel hospital amid a reign of bombing from President al-Assad – but nor does it stop rolling while she falls in love, has a baby, and jokes around with her friends and neighbours. This is the story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. It is an important, powerful, astonishing documentary. Alex Pollard Republic Film Distribution The best films of 2019 9. Can You Ever Forgive Me? It feels almost blasphemous to be glad of Julianne Moore stepping down from a role, but Lee Israel – the cantankerous, lonely literary forger who found herself the target of an FBI investigation in the Nineties – feels like a part Melissa McCarthy was born to play. Nimbly directed by Marielle Heller (who was shunned by the Oscars in the Best Director category), Can You Ever Forgive Me? is a sharp, funny and deeply compassionate examination of loneliness and self-destruction. Richard E Grant and Dolly Wells give wonderful supporting performances, too. Alex Pollard AP The best films of 2019 8. Booksmart As deeply indebted to the teen movie genre as it is formally and narratively rebellious, Booksmart grounds its traditional night-before-graduation plot (teenagers eager to crash a party) in touching character-driven drama. Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever, both instant stars, convey the ever-shifting dynamics and heightened dramas of adolescent best-friendship perfectly. Behind the camera, meanwhile, actor-turned-director Olivia Wilde demonstrates a staggering amount of emotional empathy and technical mastery for someone so green. Adam White Annapurna Pictures The best films of 2019 7. The Irishman Comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s previous films (Goodfellas, Casino) are unfounded considering The Irishman is unlike any other gangster film you’ll see. With his three-hour-30-minute-long opus, Scorsese places the harsh spotlight on mortality. Instead of tracking the rise of Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) from regular family man to seasoned hitman with glitzy panache, we see him shamefully confess his crimes as an elderly man ruminating on his past in a nursing home. The result is an unsettlingly moving character study unafraid to ask the big questions.​Jacob Stolworthy Netflix The best films of 2019 6. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood With his ninth feature, Quentin Tarantino took a breath and crafted an unhurried, oddly heartwarming fable, one that came with a career-best performance from Brad Pitt. Its release rolled around with the usual smattering of discourse-steering controversy but, for all the complaints about the director’s depiction of his film star subjects, including the scant usage of Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate, the fact remains that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is one of the filmmaker’s most accomplished films – a free’n’easy sun-soaked delve into Sixties Hollywood, whose much-discussed final 20 minutes provided topics of conversation all summer long. Jacob Stolworthy Andrew Cooper/Sony-Columbia Pictures via AP The best films of 2019 5. Eighth Grade For too many years the internet was exclusively evil in movies, something for tech boffins to hack, or used to steal Sandra Bullock’s identity. Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade felt so comparatively real because it felt like the real internet, which has been as toxic and terrifying as it has been helpful to a generation of young people. Elsie Fisher, as a 13-year-old girl chronicling her confidence and anxieties in a vlog, is an adorable delight here, in a film that is devastatingly, heartbreakingly and endearingly human. Adam White Rex The best films of 2019 4. The Favourite Yorgos Lanthimos’s delightful, subversive vision has shaken the cobwebs out of costume drama. Set in the 18th century, it follows a trio of women – two cousins, Sarah (Rachel Weisz) and Abigail (Emma Stone), and the ruling Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) – as they vie for power over each other and England. Desire, savagery, and manipulative vulnerability all become weapons in the hands of those who have no choice but to fight dirty. But, then, Colman’s childless, gout-ridden Queen Anne tenderly reveals her shattered soul – it’s an Academy Award-winning performance that brings a slice of tragedy to an otherwise sublime farce. Clarisse Loughrey AP The best films of 2019 3. If Beale Street Could Talk The marriage of disparate talents united to ensure If Beale Street Could Talk is worthy of mention alongside Barry Jenkins’ previous film, Moonlight – The Independent’s film of the decade. With his film, Jenkins takes the words of James Baldwin and translates them into visual poetry. From Nicholas Britell’s mesmerising score to Regina King’s towering supporting performance (that Oscar was well deserved), the result is a creative tour de force. Jacob Stolworthy Photos Annapurna Pictures The best films of 2019 2. Marriage Story Here is a love story about divorce. Noah Baumbach writes and directs this aching, empathetic depiction of a couple whose marriage has fallen apart. As ruthless divorce lawyers driving a wedge between two people already hanging by a thread, Ray Liotta and Laura Dern are magnificent, while Scarlett Johansson gives her best performance in years as a woman trying to do the right thing without knowing what that is. But the real star is Adam Driver, who – hulking as he is – makes himself seem small and fragile. For his rendition of Sondheim’s “Being Alive” alone, Marriage Story deserves all the awards coming its way. Alex Pollard Netflix The best films of 2019 1. Little Women Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel – the story of four Massachusetts sisters coming of age during the American Civil War – may be a period piece, but there is nothing staid or stuffy about it. The girls, played by Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Emma Watson and Eliza Scanlen, talk and clamber over one another, their hair messy, their dresses scorched, their ambitions unfettered. It is a lively, profound adaptation. Alexandre Desplat provides the exuberant score, and Yorick La Saux’s cinematography is lush and textured. “I didn’t want it to be beautiful at the expense of being real,” said Gerwig. “But I did want it to feel like you wish you can jump inside and live in there or eat it. I remember trying to explain that to the gaffer, who was like, ‘You want what?’ I was like, ‘I want them to want to eat it.’” And how delicious it is. Alex Pollard Sony Pictures Entertainment

Here is a run-down of familiar faces who have spurned their New Year's honour:

Skepta

Skepta performing at the Governors Ball Music Festival, June 2017 (Getty)

Skepta claimed he had turned down an MBE for the 2017 New Year's Honours via a new track, titled "Hypocrisy".

In the second verse of Hypocrisy, the grime artist raps: “Just came back from the Ivors/ And look at what we collected/ The MBE got rejected/I'm not trying to be accepted.”

Paul Weller

British rock icon Paul Weller turned down a CBE (Getty)

The musician rejected a CBE in 2006. In a statement a spokesperson for Weller simply said: “Paul was surprised and flattered, but it wasn’t really for him.”

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

(Getty Images (Getty Images)

The journalist and author said in 2006 she had been “stupid” to accept an MBE, which she later returned.

“I was stupid once and allowed myself to accept an MBE, partly to please my mum, who was always afraid that my big mouth would get us deported from here, as we were from Uganda," she wrote.

“Then the poet Benjamin Zephaniah shamed me live on Channel 4 News, just as the Iraq war was building up and my republicanism was solidifying.

“I returned the lovely object and have had to put up with scorn ever since, some deserved. But I now speak with the zeal of a convert. The honours system sucks and we should start again, devise a fair and independent new method to annually acclaim exceptional citizens for their contribution to the nation, not to overweening political parties or the semi-skilled, dysfunctional Windsors.”

Ken Loach

(Getty (Getty)

The film director, whose films focus on social issues such as poverty and homelessness, spoke about turning down an OBE in 1977.

“It’s all the things I think are despicable: patronage, deferring to the monarchy and the name of the British Empire, which is a monument of exploitation and conquest," he said.

“I turned down the OBE because it’s not a club you want to join when you look at the villains who’ve got it.”

Alan Bennett

Playwright and author Alan Bennett turned down the offer of becoming a CBE in 1988 and then rejected a knighthood in 1996.

He said the reason for doing so was because he did not believe that he could carry off being a knight: “I felt that, in my case, it just wouldn’t suit me, that’s all. It would be like wearing a suit every day of your life.”

Jim Broadbent

Alan Bennett criticised the lack of fairness in British society encapsulated by the private school system (Getty)

“I was offered an OBE a couple of years ago, but I said ‘no’," Jim Broadbent revealed in 2012.

"I’m not that comfortable with actors receiving honours, partly because I think they ought to go to those who really help others.

“Besides, I like the idea of actors not being part of the establishment. We’re vagabonds and rogues, and we’re not a part of the authorities and establishment, really. If you mix the two together, things get blurry.”

Jon Snow

Jon Snow made the remark as he reported on pro-Brexit protests for Channel 4 News Live (Channel 4)

The Channel 4 News anchor who has a career spanning 40 years and reported on major events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and Nelson Mandela’s release from prison turned down an OBE on the grounds of being a journalist.

He said he believed journalists shouldn’t take honours from the government, explaining: “I tried to find out why I’d been given it and was unable to get a clear answer, or, indeed to find out who had proposed me,” reports the New York Times.

Benjamin Zephaniah

Benjamin Zephaniah, who has a hybrid Birmingham-Afro-Caribbean accent (Rex)

The celebrated poet turned down an OBE in 2003. Penning an article for the Guardian, he firmly asserted: “Benjamin Zephaniah OBE – no way Mr Blair, no way Mrs Queen. I am profoundly anti-empire.” Explaining he “gets angry” when hearing the word “empire” the poet also said it would have been better to give him “one of these empire things” for his work to combat racism or promoting animal rights rather than literature where “there are a whole lot of writers who are better than me.”

French and Saunders

Dawn French Jennifer Saunders (BBC)

The comedy duo turned down OBEs in 2001. Saunders later told Source magazine in 2008: “If I felt I deserved a Damehood I’d accept it.”

Looking back she said: “At the time, we felt that we were being paid very well to have a lot of fun. It didn’t seem right somehow… It felt a bit fake to stand alongside people who devoted their lives to truly worthy causes.”

Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl in 1971 (Getty)

The beloved children’s author behind Charlie and the Chocolate Factory who died in 1990 reportedly refused a knighthood in 1986. His name was one of many revealed by the Telegraph after a Freedom of Information act in 2012.

David Bowie

Golden years: David Bowie (Getty)

The iconic performer spurned honours twice. He refused a CBE in 2000 and later a knighthood in 2003. The 68-year-old reportedly explained: “I would never have any intention of accepting anything like that. I seriously don’t know what it’s for. It’s not what I spent my life working for."

The TV chef was another name who was revealed to have turned down an OBE in 2001. She explained: “I’m not saving lives and I’m not doing anything other than something I absolutely love.”

The award-winning director was offered a knighthood following his successful Opening Ceremony routine at the London Olympics in 2012. He rejected "Sir Danny", saying he’d rather be a “man of the people” and that he’s proud to be an “equal citizen” which was reflected in his Opening Ceremony.

Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle is to team up with Peep Show writers for a new Channel 4 drama (Getty Images)

Alfred Hitchcock

The Birds and Psycho director turned down a CBE in 1962 but later went on to accept a knighthood and was ‘Sir Alfred Hitchcock’ for only four months before his death in 1980. According to the Daily Mail, he originally refused the lesser title because it didn’t do justice to his contribution to British culture.

Francis Crick

The physicist who discovered DNA, along with James Watson, was offered a CBE in 1963 but declined, one year after they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine. He apparently believed the British monarchy to be “out of date”, reported the Mail.

In 2008, the scientist told how he was offered a knighthood in the late 1990s but declined – reportedly over the UK government’s science funding.

British scientist and theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking attends a launch event for a new award for science communication, called the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication, in London

The Beatle didn’t exactly turn his MBE down, but returned it four years after receiving the accolade.

In a letter to the Queen explaining his decision he listed Britain’s involvement in “the Nigeria-Biafra thing” (The Nigerian Civil War), the support of the USA’s war in Vietnam and “'Cold Turkey' [by Plastic Ono Band] slipping down the charts”.

John Le Carre