Acclaimed and legendary British actor Sir Tom Courtenay received the Joseph Plateau Honorary Award yesterday evening at the 53rd edition of Film Fest Gent. He attended the screening of Lance Hammer’s poignant, deeply human drama “Queen at Sea” (2026), in which he plays the husband of a woman suffering from dementia—a film he describes as his best work to date. “Queen at Sea” had previously won awards at the Berlin International Film Festival. Last week, his fellow countryman, film director Danny Boyle, also received a Joseph Plateau Honorary Award at Film Fest Gent.

When Tom Courtenay, born on February 25, 1937, in Kingston upon Hull, failed his first year at University College London, he decided to try his luck just a few doors down at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He had not even graduated when film directors came calling. He hit the mark immediately when Tony Richardson cast him in the lead role of “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” (1962), a film about a young delinquent named Colin Smith whose running talent is exploited by a headmaster.

Tom Courtenay became an overnight sensation and, as an ‘angry young man,’ and even as the face of the British New Wave with a series of innovative, socially conscious films. Courtenay’s next film, “Billy Liar” (1963), directed by John Schlesinger, was also part of that movement. He had already played the role of the fantasist Billy Liar on stage, and it was on the film set that he met Julie Christie. They reunited in 1965 for David Lean’s “Doctor Zhivago.” After a BAFTA win (1963), followed by two BAFTA nominations, “Doctor Zhivago” earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

His career continued to gain momentum; he was directed by the likes of Joseph Losey, Anatole Litvak, and Bryan Forbes, while Dirk Bogarde, Sophia Loren, Omar Sharif, Kirk Douglas, Peter O’Toole, and James Fox were just a few of his co-stars.

Despite all the acclaim and glory, Tom Courtenay remained slightly frustrated. He felt more at home on stage than on a film set, and he was convinced that the stage offered greater scope for personal and artistic growth. He preferred being an actor to being a movie star. It was not until 1983 that he was persuaded to step in front of the camera again for Peter Yates’s “The Dresser.” Just as with “Billy Liar,” he had previously performed the role of the dresser on stage in London, Manchester, and on Broadway. He received a Tony Award nomination for the stage role, and the film earned him a Golden Globe and his second Oscar nomination.

Courtenay’s body of work during the final two decades of the 20th century comprises a mix of theatre, film, and television movies. George Lucas’s TV movie “Young Indiana Jones and the Treasure of the Peacock’s Eye” (1995) falls into this latter category. Additionally, in the BBC drama “A Rather English Marriage” (1998), he once again appeared alongside Albert Finney, the very man whose footsteps he had followed in the stage production of “Billy Liar.”

“Billy Liar” (1963, trailer)

Over the past quarter-century, Tom Courtenay’s theatre work largely gave way to television series; his credits include episodes of “Little Dorrit” (2008), “The Royle Family” (2008), “Unforgotten” (2015), “Mandy” (2022), and “Maya” (2026). His film career saw a revival in 2012 with “Quartet,” Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut, in which he starred alongside Dame Maggie Smith. This paved the way for his finest work to come: Andrew Haigh’s “45 Years” (2015) and Lance Hammer’s “Queen at Sea” (2026). Both films premiered at the Berlinale and earned acting awards for Courtenay and his co-stars, Charlotte Rampling and Anna Calder-Marshall, respectively.

In “45 Years,” Courtenay plays a man thrown off balance after the body of a long-lost former lover is discovered, a revelation that impacts his relationship of 45 years. In “Queen at Sea,” now screening at Film Fest Gent, the Joseph Plateau Honorary Award recipient delivers a magnificent performance as the husband and primary caregiver of his wife, who is suffering from dementia.

Tom Courtenay belongs in the ranks of great British actors such as Dame Maggie Smith, Anthony Hopkins, Michael Caine, Alec Guinness, Alan Bates, Oliver Reed, Albert Finney, and others. He was mistaken, however, when he temporarily turned his back on the film world because he believed a stage career had more longevity than a film career. Naturally, he could not have predicted then that, at the age of 89, he would declare “Queen at Sea” to be his best film.

The Joseph Plateau Honorary Award is presented to festival guests who have made a special contribution to the art of filmmaking. The award itself is a replica of Professor Joseph Plateau’s phenakistoscope, a device that allowed him to set a series of sequential drawings continuously ‘in motion’. The phenakistiscope helped lay the foundation for the concept of moving images and, by extension, filmmaking itself.

Previous recipients of the Joseph Plateau Honorary Award are actors, actresses, film directors, producers, composers and other notable international film professionals: 1991 André Delvaux, Michel Legrand 1992 Alain Cuny, Carl Davis 1993 Robert Altman, Philippe Sarde 1994 John Hurt, Jean-Claude Petit, Henri Storck 1995 James Earl Jones, Gabrielle Claes 1997 Gina Lollobrigida, Sydney Pollack, David Puttnam 1998 Peter Ustinov, Robert Wise, Alain Resnais, Shohei Imamura, Elmer Bernstein 1999 Sandra Bullock, Stanley Donen, Irwin Winkler, Peter Greenaway, Bonnie Arnold 2000 Morgan Freeman, Hans Zimmer 2001 Roger Corman, Richard Zanuck, Lili Fini Zanuck, Roy E. Disney, Bertrand Tavernier, Gabriel Yared 2002 Juliette Binoche, Jeanne Moreau, Jean Reno, Blair Underwood, Hanna Schygulla, Roland Verhavert, Jan Van Raemdonck 2003 Tony Curtis 2004 Richard Attenborough 2005 Mike Leigh, Alan Ladd Jr., Nand Buyl, Zbigniew Preisner 2006 Agnès Varda 2007 Kathleen Turner, Danny Glover, Walter Hill 2008 Woody Harrelson, Richard Jenkins, Walter Parkes, Laurie MacDonald 2009 Kevin Costner, Andy Garcia, Claude Miller 2010 Catherine Deneuve, Paul Greengrass, Dirk Brossé 2011 Isabelle Huppert, Norman Jewison, Chris Lomme, Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne 2012 Emmanuelle Riva, Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani 2013 Paul Schrader, István Szabó, Jacques Debrulle 2015 Christopher Plummer, Alan Parker 2016 Ken Loach, Jeremy Thomas 2017 Greta Scacchi, Johan Leysen, Pierre Drouot 2018 Dirk Impens 2019 Geraldine Chaplin, Agustí Villaronga 2020 Viggo Mortensen 2021 Harry Kümel, Andrea Arnold 2022 Raoul Servais, Céline Sciamma 2023 Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Terence Davies 2024 Emily Watson, Michel Khleifi 2025 Theresa Russell 2026 Danny Boyle, Tom Courtenay