Halle Berry, Denzel Washington win best actor Oscars

5.25pm

HOLLYWOOD - Halle Berry won the best actress Oscar this afternoon at the 74th Annual Academy Awards for her role as a down-and-out waitress in racial drama Monster's Ball, becoming the first African-American woman ever to earn that honour.

With the next envelope, Denzel Washington was named best actor for his performance as a cop-gone-wrong in Training Day.

Berry, 33, took her place in the Oscar history books after emerging as a late favourite two weeks ago when she won the Screen Actors Guild award for her performance.

Berry's screen portrait of a woman overtaken by grief and rage -- together with a much talked-about sex scene -- was considered her best performance since her big screen breakthrough in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever in 1991.

Earlier today, Shrek, the uproarious anti-fairy tale co-directed by New Zealand's Andrew Adamson, won the first ever Oscar for a full length animated feature.

The computer-animated tale of an ugly green ogre with a talking donkey as a sidekick triumphed over competitors Jimmy Neutron and Monsters, Inc from Walt Disney Co -- which has traditionally dominated the world of film animation.

Shrek was made by rival studio Dreamworks.

"Shrek," with its satire on modern culture ranging from theme parks to romance, proved a hit with both children and adults and became one of the highest grossing films of last year.

It took more than US$250 million at the US box office alone.

British actor Jim Broadbent won the best supporting actor Oscar for his role in the film Iris.

Broadbent, who featured heavily in pre-Oscar awards, said "stone the crows" as he stepped up to accept his award for playing Iris Murdoch's husband, John Bayley.

Jennifer Connelly won the best supporting actress Oscar for playing the wife of genius mathematician John Nash, whose struggle with schizophrenia is used as the backdrop for "A Beautiful Mind."

Connelly, 31 and a first-time Academy Award nominee, started her career as a child model, making her film debut in 1984's "Once Upon a Time in America."

The Academy Awards are the US film industry's top honours and are given out each year by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in a ceremony televised live around the globe.

- REUTERS

Oscar nominees and winners (full list)

nzherald.co.nz/oscars