Sacha Baron Cohen pranks BAFTA LA Britannia awards

Andrea Mandell | USA TODAY

BEVERLY HILLS — It seemed like George Clooney's night, but Sacha Baron Cohen stole the show.

At the BAFTA LA Britannia Awards on Saturday night, a handful of stars were honored at the Beverly Hilton, including Clooney, Baron Cohen, Benedict Cumberbatch, Sir Ben Kingsley, Kathryn Bigelow and Idris Elba.

And while a variety of stars were on hand to toast the honorees, including Julia Roberts, Sean Penn, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Salma Hayek, no one pulled focus like Baron Cohen, who received the Charlie Chaplin Britannia Award for Excellence in Comedy. Onstage, he accepted a Chaplin-like cane from an elderly woman in a wheelchair, introduced as the oldest living actor to have worked with Chaplin himself.

The actor promptly broke into a tap dance, tripped and sent the woman flying, in a moment guaranteed to go viral. "This is obviously a tragedy, but on the bright side, what a way to go," riffed Baron Cohen from the podium. (The show was broadcast on Sunday on BBC America.)

Other stars were more serious in their approach to collecting the awards. "I really am overwhelmed. I'm not just pretending I am," said Kingsley, who dedicated his Albert R. Broccoli Award for Worldwide Contribution to Entertainment to young actors. "Know that to tell a story is to heal someone somewhere, and know that your vulnerability is your greatest strength," he urged.

Ejiofor made Cumberbatch blush with a litany of compliments from the stage, and actress Alice Eve commented that the Sherlock actor's "trust is almost childlike."

Accepting his award for British Actor of the Year, Cumberbatch said he was "quite flabbergasted," and especially thanked his parents, both actors, for their support. "(The award) will end up on my mum's mantelpiece," he said. "She's a very strong-willed woman."

Nelson Mandela's daughter, Zindzi, flew in to present Elba with the Britannia Humanitarian Award, praising his portrayal in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, and noting that both men share "a passion for the human spirit."

By the time the night wound down, the spotlight shined on Roberts, who presented Clooney with the Stanley Kubrick Award for Excellence in Film.

"I rather famously don't have children," Clooney started, to laughter, "but I do have a family. And it's a family of actors and directors and of writers, and, God forbid, agents, and studios and journalists. People who love what they do."

Clooney's current pace is startling. Having just finished press for Gravity, the actor is now promoting August: Osage County (which he produced), finishing Monuments Men (which recently moved its release date to early next year) and shooting Tomorrowland.

"It's not sleeping," he said on the red carpet. "Monuments Men is a six-day-a-week gig. I have an editing bay next to me in Vancouver while I'm shooting Tomorrowland. It's been that kind of pace. But it's OK. It's what I do."