Davis, who is known for fantasy film Willow and the Harry Potter movies, received Bafta’s highest honour on Sunday in Royal Festival Hall, London for his performing and advocacy work.
For more recent audiences, he is known for playing the fastidious charms Professor Filius Flitwick in the Harry Potter film franchise, as well as being in Ricky Gervais’s Extras and also working with Gervais on BBC mockumentary Life’s Too Short.
The actor also runs the talent agency Willow Management, which represents actors under five feet and over seven feet tall, and in 2014 he founded the Reduced Height Theatre Company, to celebrate the talent in the short actor community.
Davis has continued to come back for a host of Star Wars movies, where he has played various characters including Wald and Weazel in The Phantom Menace (1999), Wollivan in The Force Awakens (2015), and Wodibin in The Last Jedi (2017).
Davis, who was born with spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita, a rare bone disorder that results in dwarfism, said he hopes his award is also for his work as an actor as well as his activism.
