Also given the fellowship,

Stanley Kubrick's wife Christiane picks up the Bafta

Kubrick was an icon of modern cinema, producing 13 films in a career which began in 1953.

The American-born director, who shocked the world with his film A Clockwork Orange, was described by his biographer Michael Ciment as "one of the most demanding, most original and most visionary film-makers of our time".

At the Oscars, Kubrick's epic Spartacus was awarded four Academy Awards: best supporting actor for Peter Ustinov, best cinematography, best costume design and best art direction.

Science fiction classic 2001: A Space Odyssey won Kubrick his only personal Oscar - for best visual effects.

As a director, he was known for his unswerving search for perfection. Depending on who was speaking Kubrick was a genius or a tyrant.

Demanding director

In his last film Eyes Wide Shut, the first for 10 years, starring Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise, Harvey Keitel walked out citing "artistic differences".

But despite his reputation as a demanding director, there were few actors who would not jump at the opportunity to work with him.

2001: Kubrick's only Oscar winner

Jack Nicholson, who starred in The Shining, said of Kubrick: "He gives new meaning to the word meticulous."

The very private movie director, whose works were frequently the cause of great controversy, shied away from publicity and newspaper interviews.

Terrified of flying, he settled in England in 1979 and bought an old manor house in 172 acres in the exclusive estate of Childwickbury, near St Albans, Herts, with his third wife Christiane.

For the final year of his life he worked, almost unnoticed, on the erotic thriller Eyes Wide Shut at London's Pinewood Studios, but died before the film's release.

Acclaimed career

Michael Caine has had a movie career stretching back more than four decades but at the age of 67 he is enjoying a renaissance.

The latest recognition comes on top of a string of lifetime achievement awards recognising a film career featuring good, bad and occasionally forgettable films but through which his popularity has remained undimmed.

Michael Caine: Oscar for Cider House Rules

Caine has been garnering awards and nominations for more than 30 years with acclaimed performances which have been peppered with racketeers and wide boys.

Born Maurice Mickelwhite, he began acting as a teenager at a youth club. After serving in Korea on his National Service he joined a rep company in Horsham, West Sussex when demobbed in 1952.

He started as an assistant stage manager but went on to tread the boards himself, later taking minor roles in TV plays and shows like Dixon Of Dock Green.

Oscar nominations

It was not until 1964 that he had his movie breakthrough playing upper-crust officer Lieutenant Gonville in the film Zulu, despite his own pronounced London accent which he retains to this day.

He then landed the lead role in The Ipcress File as anti-hero Harry Palmer and played the character in two sequels.

But it was his role in Alfie, a defining British sixties movie, that transformed Caine into a star and earned him the first of his five Oscar nominations.

Hollywood beckoned but it was British films which provided him with his best roles like The Italian Job and Get Carter.

His critical acclaim continued with Oscar nominations for his boozy academic in Educating Rita and a loathsome adulterer in Woody Allen's movie Hannah and Her Sisters, the latter winning him the best supporting actor award.

For The Cider House Rules he played a kindly doctor and adopted his first American accent, which took him three months of voice coaching.

However, for his latest role, the recently filmed Shiner, he is back in traditional territory as a gangster with a London twang.

After the ceremony Caine told how he felt his working class roots had always made him an outsider.

He said: "You never get over that, but maybe I'll get over that and I'll find a lot of other people who think they're outsiders, and so we can make our own establishment of outsiders."

Caine added: "I'll never retire. I sort of gave it up for a couple of years a few years ago. I went nuts. I'm here now until I die."