Winslet nabs best actress at Oscars

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Kate Winslet, 33, won the Oscar for best actress in “The Reader” and the Oscar for best director went to Danny Boyle for “Slumdog Millionaire” at the 81st Academy Awards Sunday night.

The Oscar for best director went to Danny Boyle for “Slumdog Millionaire”.

“It’s bloody wonderful,” Mr. Boyle said.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tried to rebound from record low ratings at last year’s Oscars by revamping the award ceremony; out are comedians and theme montages, in is smooth Hugh Jackman and a show that mimicked the process of making a movie.

But the biggest early awards were for supporting performers and scripts, with the big moment coming when the late Heath Ledger, as expected, won the award for supporting actor for his role as the Joker in “The Dark Knight.”

In one of the star-studded presentations, Christopher Walken, Cuba Gooding Jr., Alan Arkin, Kevin Kline and Joel Grey all of whom had previously won the award presented the trophy to the father, mother and sister of Mr. Ledger, who died of an overdose last year.

“This award tonight would have humbly validated Heath’s quiet determination to be truly accepted by you all here, his peers, within an industry he so loved,” his father, Kim Ledger, said in the trio’s acceptance speech.

“Heath Ledger as the Joker in ‘The Dark Knight’ kept us all on edge, anxious to see what act of appalling mischief he might commit next. With this bravura performance Heath Ledger has left us an original and enduring legacy,” presenter Kevin Kline said.

No less star-studded was the first award of the night, as Eva Marie Saint, Whoopi Goldberg, Goldie Hawn, Anjelica Huston and Tilda Swinton presented the best supporting actress trophy an award they also had all won.

Introducing Amy Adams, nominated for playing a novice nun in “Doubt,” Miss Goldberg, who starred in “Sister Act,” said she knows how difficult playing a nun can be habits make your face look fatter than it is, and “your main love interest is ” gesturing up as if to heaven.

Penelope Cruz, acting almost entirely in her native Spanish in the bilingual Woody Allen film “Vicky Christina Barcelona,” became the third woman to be directed to a supporting actress win by Mr. Allen and just the sixth person to win an Oscar for a role principally in a foreign language.

“Has anybody ever fainted here? I might be the first one,” she said, before thanking Mr. Allen “for trusting me with this great role.”

She also played up the international element of the awards in an increasingly global film market by thanking Spanish directors “my friend” Pedro Almodovar, Bigas Luna and Fernando Trueba for giving her the roles that made an international star, and by giving the last part of her acceptance speech in Spanish, in which she paid tribute to “all the actors in the country.”

Both screenwriting Oscars went to contenders for best picture Dustin Lance Black took the award for his original screenplay of “Milk” while Simon Beaufoy won adapted script for “Slumdog Millionaire,” the first of several early awards for this year’s little movie that could.

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