Following are the top awards that were given away at the 81st Academy Awards.
Best Actor
Sean Penn won his second Academy Award for best actor for his moving portrayal of slain gay rights leader Harvey Milk in Milk. The win follows his first best-actor award for 2003's Mystic River.
He earned a standing ovation from the starry crowd as his wife, Robin Wright Penn, tearfully looked on. (Penn, however, didn't thank his wife; the two filed for divorce in late 2007 before reconciling last spring.)
"You commie, homo-loving sons of guns," Penn began in accepting the prize. "I did not expect this and I want it to be very clear that I do know how hard I make it to appreciate me often."
In this highly competitive category, Penn was up against Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon, Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Richard Jenkins in The Visitor.
Penn had already won the Screen Actors Guild and Critics Choice awards as well as numerous honors from film critics groups across the country.
"How did he do it?" fellow Oscar winner Robert De Niro wondered in introducing Penn. "How for so many years did he get all those jobs playing straight men?"
Milk was the first openly gay man elected to major public office in the United States when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. The following year, he was shot to death along with Mayor George Moscone by board colleague Dan White.
In wrapping up his own speech, Penn mentioned the protesters who lined the streets of Hollywood near the Oscar festivities, holding anti-gay signs: "We've got to have equal rights for everyone," he said.
Backstage, when asked what he would tell those protesters if he could speak to them, Penn responded, "I'd tell them to turn in their hate card and find their better self."
Best Actress
British actress Kate Winslet won her first Oscar on Sunday for her portrayal of a German woman with a secret Nazi past in the romantic drama The Reader.
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Titanic star Winslet, 33, was Oscar-nominated five times in the past 13 years but had always returned home empty-handed.
Her best actress Oscar joins two Golden Globes, a Screen Actors Guild award, a British BAFTA and a handful of US critics awards that Winslet has won this season. Winslet gave credit to her fellow best actress nominees – Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Angelina Jolie and Melissa Leo – calling them "goddesses." "I think we all can't believe we are in the category with Meryl Streep at all," Winslet said.
In addition to Winslet's acclaimed turn in The Reader, she won plaudits this awards season for her performance as a disillusioned housewife in Revolutionary Road. The two films were released only weeks apart.
Winslet told the Academy Award audience she would be lying if she said she hadn't practiced an Oscar acceptance speech before. "I think I was probably eight years old and staring into the bathroom mirror, and this would have been a shampoo bottle," she said gesturing to her golden statuette. "Well, it's not a shampoo bottle now!"
Best Supporting Actor
Australia's Heath Ledger, who died last year, won the best supporting actor Oscar on Sunday for his maniacal performance as The Joker in Batman movie The Dark Knight, the hot favorite for the award.
Ledger, who died at age 28 of an accidental prescription drug overdose, was only the second actor to receive a posthumous Oscar. Peter Finch won as best actor for his role as a TV anchorman in the 1976 film Network two months after dying from a heart attack.
Ledger's Oscar was also a rare exception to the rule that Academy Award voters overlook action hero movies, and those who perform in them, for the industry's highest honors but he had become an emotional favourite internationally.
"This award tonight ... validated Heath's quiet determination to be truly accepted by you all here, his peers, in an industry that he so loved," Ledger's father, Kim, said, accepting the Oscar on his son's behalf with Ledger's mother, Sally Bell, and the actor's sister, Kate Ledger.
"We have been truly overwhelmed by the honor and respect bestowed on him with this award," said Sally Bell.
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Heath Ledger’s compelling performance, together with worldwide interest after his death, helped power the Batman sequel to a global box-office gross of more than $1 billion.
Ledger was nominated for an Oscar for his 2005 role as a gay cowboy in Brokeback Mountain but did not win the prize.
This time, Ledger picked up virtually every award for playing The Joker – a Golden Globe, British BAFTA, Screen Actors Guild and a slew of US and Australian critics awards.
Best Supporting Actress
Penelope Cruz became the first Spanish-born actress to win an Oscar by taking the best supporting actress award for her role as tempestuous artist Maria Elena in Woody Allen's romantic comedy Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
Cruz, 34, thanked both Allen and Spanish film director Pedro Almodovar for their roles in shaping her career and dedicated the gold statuette to the actors from her country.
"Thank you Woody for trusting me with this beautiful character. Thank you for having written over all these years some of the greatest characters for women," she said.
With her Oscar win, Cruz, joins fellow actresses Dianne Wiest and Mira Sorvino in scoring best supporting-actress Oscars for their performances in Woody Allen films.
"I grew up in a place called Alcobendas, where this was not a very realistic dream," said Cruz.
Dressed in a 60-year-old ivory Pierre Balmain vintage gown and fighting back tears, Cruz asked anyone had ever fainted while accepting an Oscar. "I might be the first one."
Cruz's Oscar win follows a British BAFTA award and other US critics awards this season for her performance in Vicky Cristina Barcelona as the fiery ex-wife to a bohemian artist portrayed by Javier Bardem who has wooed a pair of young American women vacationing Spain.
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