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LOS ANGELES - Veteran director Martin Scorsese has won the first Oscar of his more than 40-year-old career for crime thriller The Departed, ending one of the longest losing streaks at the world's top film awards.
"Could you double-check the envelope? I'm overwhelmed," Scorsese, 64, said, as he accepted the award from fellow directing titans Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.
Scorsese had been nominated five other times for directing such classics as Raging Bull and Goodfellas. He received writing nominations for Goodfellas and The Age of Innocence.
The Departed also took Best Picture honours.
Paradoxically, his victory came for a populist effort that was released with no intentions of seeking awards. Returning to his crime roots, Scorsese gathered an all-star cast, headed by Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon to fashion a story about official corruption in Boston.
It quickly became the biggest film of his career, selling more than US$131 million ($187.59 million) worth of tickets at the North American box office. It picked up five Academy Award nominations in all. In addition to best director, it won for best picture, William Monahan's adapted screenplay and Thelma Schoonmaker's editing.
In recent years, Scorsese campaigned mightily for 2002 historical drama Gangs of New York and two years later Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator, but he failed to reel in the big award.
The Departed tells of an undercover Massachusetts state cop, played by DiCaprio, who infiltrates a criminal gang to catch a mole (Damon) in the state police.
Helen Mirren took home Best Actress and Forest Whitaker won Best Actor at the awards in Hollywood.
Helen Mirren won the award for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth in The Queen and Whitaker for his acclaimed portrayal of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin The Last King of Scotland.
Whitaker, the hulking, Texas-born character actor who gained 50 pounds to play Amin and dazzled critics with his portrayal of the mercurial, brutal dictator, won the Oscar on his first-ever nomination.
The 45-year-old actor's menacing performance earned him the award over sentimental favourite Peter O'Toole, the British veteran of stage and screen who has never won despite eight nominations.
The clearly emotional Whitaker took several long breaths, his Oscar statue in hand, before pronouncing himself "overwhelmed" by the award and pulling out a prepared speech.
"When I was a kid the only way I saw movies was from the backseat of my family's car at the drive-in," Whitaker said.
"It wasn't my reality to think I would be acting in movies, so receiving this honour tonight tells me it is possible," he said. "It is possible for a kid from East Texas, raised in South Central L.A. and Carson who believes in his dreams, commits himself to them with his heart, to touch them and to have them happen."
Mirren Reigns
It was the first Oscar for Mirren, 61, who has already swept up more than 20 major awards for her portrayal of the reserved Elizabeth II in the days after the sudden death in 1997 of Princess Diana.
Saluting the "courage and consistency" of the Queen, Mirren raised her golden statuette and told the audience: "I thank her because if it wasn't for her I most certainly would not be here. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Queen!"
The Oscar crowned a sensational 12 months for Mirren who demonstrated her range and won critical acclaim for playing an earlier English queen in the television series Elizabeth I and a hard-bitten, alcoholic detective in television's Prime Suspect.
The silver-haired actress, a 40-year veteran of stage, screen and television, won universal praise for her nuanced portrayal of Queen Elizabeth, whose traditional stiff upper lip was challenged and misunderstood by an emotional public grieving for the popular and glamorous Diana.
"For 50 years and more, Elizabeth Windsor has maintained her dignity, her sense of duty and her hairstyle. She's had her feet planted firmly on the ground, her hat on her head, her handbag on her arm and she has weathered many, many storms," Mirren said while accepting the Oscar.
An Inconvenient Win
Al Gore's global warming film An Inconvenient Truth won Best Documentary.
"People all over the world, we need to solve the climate crisis," Gore said after receiving the award.
"It's not a political issue, it's a moral issue, with the possible exception of the will to act. But the will to act is a renewable resource. It's time to renew it."
Former American Idol contestant Jennifer Hudson won the Oscar for best supporting actress today for her performance as the spurned lead singer of a female trio in Dreamgirls.
"I didn't think I was going to win. But wow," Hudson said.
She paid tribute to her grandmother "because she was a singer and she had the passion for it but she never had the chance and that was the thing that pushed me forward to continue."
In a surprise victory, veteran actor Alan Arkin, who plays an irascible grandfather in Little Miss Sunshine, won the best supporting actor Oscar at the world's top film awards.
"More than anything, I am deeply moved by the open-hearted appreciation our little movie has received," Arkin said, after joking that he almost didn't get the job because the directors thought him too virile.
It was a surprise victory over Eddie Murphy, who won several other major Hollywood awards this year for his role as a soul singer with a drug habit in musical Dreamgirls.
But road comedy Little Miss Sunshine has been a hit with fans, and Arkin's role was a favourite because while the grandfather snorts heroin and says some mean things to his family, he also dispenses many pearls of wisdom,
The low-budget Sunshine has won wide acclaim for its story about a family of losers who learn what it means to be winners through the attitude of a 10-year-old girl who wants to be a beauty queen.
First time host Ellen DeGeneres cranked out the comedy and took swipes at the likes of Dame Judi Dench, Peter O'Toole and Leonardo DiCaprio. In one bit, she appeared backstage chatting with a crew member and talking about how Dench, who is nominated for best actress in Notes On a Scandal, failed to come to the Oscars due to knee surgery.
"She's having knee surgery," she said, then paused for impact, "on her eyes." Only minutes later, she reappeared onstage and said she had made a mistake. "It was her boobs," DeGeneres joked.
8 nominations; no win?
The host, who appeared in a burgundy tuxedo, teased 74-year-old Peter O'Toole about his eighth nomination for his role in romantic drama Venus by wondering why he has never won.
"Eighth nomination, is that right?" DeGeneres asked. "You know what they say, 'Third time's a charm.'"
The show began with several minor awards. Mexican film fantasy Pan's Labyrinth won two Oscars for best art direction and make-up. Movie musical Dreamgirls took home the Academy Award for sound mixing, and Letters From Iwo Jima won the award for sound editing.
The Oscars are given out annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and are the world's top film honors. Experts believe there are many wide open races in the major categories, especially best film, and Arkin's victory only highlighted the notion that many surprises were expected.
Little Miss Sunshine and cultural drama Babel were two leading picks for best film, but crime thriller The Departed, British royals saga The Queen and World War II tale Letters From Iwo Jima were not far behind.
Helen Mirren was clear frontrunner for best actress, and Martin Scorsese was expected to win the best director for The Departed. But they were considered the only two shoo-ins.
"If it isn't his (Scorsese's) year, I will have to eat someone's hat," actress Jodie Foster told reporters on the famed red carpet leading up to the Oscars.
- REUTERS
