View Oscar Gallery

List of the 85th annual Academy Award winners announced Sunday in Los Angeles:

1. Best Picture: "Argo."

2. Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, "Lincoln."

3. Actress: Jennifer Lawrence, "Silver Linings Playbook."

4. Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, "Django Unchained."

5. Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway, "Les Miserables."

6. Directing: Ang Lee, "Life of Pi."

7. Foreign Language Film: "Amour."

8. Adapted Screenplay: Chris Terrio, "Argo."

9. Original Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino, "Django Unchained."

10. Animated Feature Film: "Brave."

11. Production Design: "Lincoln."

12. Cinematography: "Life of Pi."

13. Sound Mixing: "Les Miserables."

14. Sound Editing (tie): "Skyfall," ''Zero Dark Thirty."

15. Original Score: "Life of Pi," Mychael Danna.

16. Original Song: "Skyfall" from "Skyfall," Adele Adkins and Paul Epworth.

17. Costume: "Anna Karenina."

18. Documentary Feature: "Searching for Sugar Man."

19. Documentary (short subject): "Inocente."

20. Film Editing: "Argo."

21. Makeup and Hairstyling: "Les Miserables."

22. Animated Short Film: "Paperman."

23. Live Action Short Film: "Curfew."

24. Visual Effects: "Life of Pi."

'Argo' takes best picture at the Oscars

LOS ANGELES: If Ben Affleck was snubbed by the Oscars, everyone should be so lucky. His Iran rescue thriller "Argo" has won best picture from the Academy Awards.

It's the first best picture winner not to be nominated for best director since 1989's "Driving Miss Daisy." But despite the omission of Affleck — or perhaps buoyed by it — "Argo" emerged as the Oscar favorite, winning top honors from the directors, producers, screen actors and writers guilds.

Affleck and fellow producers George Clooney and Grant Heslov accepted the award Sunday night.

Among the other eight nominees, Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" was perceived as the biggest competition to "Argo." The other nominees were "Life of Pi," ''Silver Linings Playbook," ''Zero Dark Thirty," ''Les Miserables," ''Amour," ''Beasts of the Southern Wild" and "Django Unchained."

HOLLYWOOD: Jennifer Lawrence became one of the youngest best actress Oscar winners ever Sunday for “Silver Linings Playbook”- using her “Hunger Games” drive to secure Hollywood's highest honor.

“You guys are just standing up because you feel bad that I fell. This is nuts!” Lawrence said about the standing ovation she received after she tripped on her way up onto the stage in a voluminous Dior Couture gown.

The 22-year-old former cheerleader has now added Academy Award prestige to the fortune undoubtedly made playing Katniss Everdeen in the blockbuster teen movie franchise.

And she is not shy of speaking her mind about Tinseltown, telling a recent interviewer: “It's almost like I subconsciously don't want to work anymore, so I'm trying to ruin my career.””I'm so aware of all the bullshit that surrounds Hollywood, and how everyone gets on this high horse and thinks that they're curing cancer and it makes me so uncomfortable every time I see it,” she said.

“So I go in the exact opposite direction and end up saying something like 'I'm pregnant!' when I'm in two franchises.”Lawrence, who plays a messed-up 20-something who falls for Bradley Cooper's recovering mental patient character in “Silver Linings Playbook,” struck Oscars gold on her second attempt, after being nominated in 2011 for “Winter's Bone.”

The only younger best actress nominees were 12-year-old Keisha Castle-Hughes in 2002's “Whale Rider” and Quvenzhane Wallis, who was in the running this year for “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” at the age of nine.

Born in Louisville, Kentucky, the young Lawrence was keen on cheerleading, field hockey, softball, and modeling -- “none of which she held a passion for,”according to her IMDb movie industry website biography.

Her acting career started at the age of 14 when she spent the summer in New York City, wowing producers with cold-read auditions and earning a number of small commercial and film roles.

One of her first jobs was a promo video for MTV reality series “My Super Sweet 16,” which she alluded to when she won best actress at the Screen Actors Guild awards.

Shortly after her 2004 New York debut, her family - she has two older brothers - moved to Los Angeles so she could pursue her career. She left school two years early in order to focus on acting.

After TV roles her first big-screen credits came in 2008, including “Garden Party” and “The Poker House,” but playing Ree in 2010 drama “Winter's Bone” was her first big break, and drew major critical acclaim.

Shortly afterwards she secured a role in “X-Men: First Class”, a summer hit in 2011, followed by being cast as the central character in “The Hunger Games,”based on the best-selling book series.

Her role as Katniss, winning a nightmarish survival-of-the-fittest contest in a dystopian future world, made her a teenage superstar. The second film in the series, “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” is due out this year.

She was named as one of industry daily Variety's Top Ten Actors to watch in 2010, and one of People magazine's Most Beautiful People in 2011. The best actress Oscar is obviously a more substantial accolade, and no doubt one that will help her already stellar career.

“There are actresses who build themselves, and then there are actresses who are built by others. I want to build myself,” she once said.

Of her future, she added: “I'd like to direct at some point. But I don't know because 10 years ago I would have never imagined that I'd be here. So in 10 years from now, I might be running a rodeo.”

Presidential Day-Lewis wins record third Oscar

HOLLYWOOD: Daniel Day-Lewis won a record third best actor Oscar on Sunday, confirming his status as one of the finest actors of his generation, with an incredible range and astonishing attention to detail.

His uncanny performance as the 16th US president in “Lincoln” could hardly be further away from his character in “My Left Foot,” in which he played a man with cerebral palsy to win his first Academy Award in 1990.

The British-Irish actor also played a gay man in an inter-racial relationship in 1985's “My Beautiful Laundrette,” in the same year he appeared in the quintessentially upper-class Englishman in “A Room with a View.”Day-Lewis - who won his other Oscar as a ruthless oil tycoon in 2007's “There Will Be Blood” - is renowned for the selectiveness and intense research with which he approaches each of his roles.

The 55-year-old actor has made only four films in the last decade. But without exception, Day-Lewis has immersed himself in each of his roles to a degree that has become legendary.

Day-Lewis was born in 1957 to Cecil Day-Lewis, then Britain's poet laureate, and Jill Balcon, an actress whose father ran London's legendary Ealing film studios.

He dropped out of school at age 13 for his first film, an uncredited bit part in “Sunday, Bloody Sunday,” then began to seriously hone his acting skills - first at the Bristol Old Vic, then with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

In 1982 he reappeared on the silver screen in the epic “Gandhi,” but he really made his name three years later in two very different films: “My Beautiful Laundrette” and “A Room with a View.”In 1987 he clinched his first starring role opposite French actress Juliette Binoche in “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” director Philip Kaufman's adaptation of the Milan Kundera novel.

Often during films Day-Lewis chooses to remain in character off-set, living and breathing the part of his on-screen persona 24 hours a day.

For 1989's “My Left Foot,” he insisted on staying in his character's wheelchair during the shoot to the consternation of crew members forced to carry him above or around camera cables and lighting.

In 1992's historical epic “The Last of the Mohicans,” Day-Lewis buffed up and learnt to live off the land as his character had done. For Martin Scorsese's period drama “The Age of Innocence,” Day-Lewis reportedly donned 1870s garb and spent several weeks wandering around New York to get into character. Also in 1993, Day-Lewis shed several pounds to play an Irishman wrongfully convicted of an IRA pub bombing in “In The Name of the Father.”Day-Lewis ordered crew members to verbally abuse him and throw cold water over him during the making of the film.

During the making of his next film, 1996's adaptation of Arthur Miller's “The Crucible”, Day-Lewis met his wife, Rebecca Miller, the daughter of the legendary late American playwright.

Day-Lewis was to make one more film - 1997's “The Boxer” - before retreating into a mysterious five-year break from acting that has been the subject of intense speculation.

The most widely reported version of events is that Day-Lewis spent part of the period living in Italy learning to become shoemaker in exchange for teaching a cobbler how to act. Whatever the truth, Day-Lewis has studiously avoided talking about the period.

Once asked what he had done during those years, Day-Lewis replied:

“Different things. Some of which I've resolutely chosen not to speak about.”Day-Lewis returned with a vengeance in 2002, teaming with Scorsese once again to play the murderous Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting in “Gangs of New York,”a role that earned him his third Oscar nomination.

A further appearance in the drama “The Ballad of Jack and Rose” in which he was directed by his wife, came in 2005, before Day-Lewis re-emerged to link with director Paul Thomas Anderson in “There Will Be Blood” six years ago.

His only movie between that and “Lincoln” was 2009's “Nine,” in which he played a film director struggling to find harmony in his professional and personal lives.

'Life of Pi' earns Ang Lee second directing Oscar

HOLLYWOOD: Taiwanese-born Ang Lee was the first Asian ever to win an Oscar for directing, in 2006 for gay cowboy movie “Brokeback Mountain.” Seven years later he has done it again with 3D fantasy “Life of Pi.””Thank you, movie god,” Lee told the audience at the 85th Academy Awards on Sunday after accepting his award.

“I need to thank Yann Martel for writing this incredibly inspiring book.”Turning his hand to just about every movie genre, the 58-year-old immigrant has earned himself awards, acclaim - and sometimes the ire - of critics and a lot of money at the global box office.

“Life of Pi,” based on the 2001 novel by Canadian novelist Martel, tells the tale of an Indian boy cast adrift in the Pacific, sharing his boat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

Almost all of Lee's films have drawn on both Western and Asian culture to depict characters struggling to fit into society, and live up to the pressures of family and repressive social expectations.

His early works include 1993's “The Wedding Banquet,” the story of a gay Taiwanese man who fakes marriage to satisfy cultural demands, and his 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen's English manners novel “Sense and Sensibility.”

This was followed by 1997 social drama “The Ice Storm,” his Oscar-winning martial arts epic “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (2000), and blockbuster 2003 superhero movie “The Hulk.”Lee was born in 1954 in Pingtung, Taiwan, where his father fled from mainland China after his own landowner parents, the director's grandparents, were executed during the Communist revolution of 1949.

After setting out to train as an actor, Lee graduated from the National Taiwan College of Arts in 1975 before heading to the United States at the age of 24 to study cinema in Illinois and New York, which remains his adopted home.

His feature directorial debut was 1992's “Pushing Hands,” a Chinese-language comedy about the generational conflicts sparked as a retired master of the Chinese art of tai chi struggles to find his place in US society.

The film was a success on both sides of the Pacific, and Lee followed it with his sexually conflicted story “The Wedding Banquet,” which garnered Golden Globe and Oscar nominations.

He repeated the feat in 1994 with “Eat Drink Man Woman,” a comic look at a family only able to express their love for each other through food. Hollywood came calling, and Lee took on the big-budget 19th-century period piece “Sense and Sensibility,” his first English-language film, starring Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant.

But he achieved global fame in 2000 with his imaginative take on Chinese martial arts films in “Crouching Tiger,” which won 10 Academy Awards nods and took home four statuettes.

Following his growing flow of movies and a critical bashing of his $120 million “Hulk,” the bruised Lee was contemplating retirement until his father, who had never approved of his movie career, talked him out of it.

He decided to do the small $14 million Western “Brokeback,” the story of two conflicted gay cowboys who fall into a secret love affair in 1960s Wyoming, in the hope that it would help him heal.

While he was thrilled to make it and gave it his signature subtle, compassionate touch, he remained tortured by the filmmaking process.

“Making movies is my 'Brokeback Mountain,'” he once said. “It's a fight, it's an effort, but at the end, I've found my secret place. The place I feel at home.”Since then he made Shanghai-based erotic spy thriller “Lust, Caution” in 2007 and 2009's “Taking Woodstock,” about the era-defining 1969 music festival, which was nominated for the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or top prize.

Hathaway dream comes true with first Oscar

HOLLYWOOD: Anne Hathaway won an Oscar on her second nomination Sunday, confirming her status as one of Hollywood's brightest acting talents - and an astonishingly powerful singer who “Dreamed a Dream.”

The 30-year-old, who took home the Academy Award for best supporting actress, had already won the Golden Globe last month for her role as the young mother and prostitute Fantine in the musical adaptation “Les Miserables.”

Her tearful rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” is one of the film's most heart-wrenching moments, the camera following her in relentless close-up, in one long take, as she laments her fate.

“It came true,” she said as she accepted her golden statuette.

“We did it upwards of 20 times, but it was the fourth take that (director) Tom (Hooper) came up to me and said, 'You know, I have it. That was the one. I don't imagine we're going to do better than that',” she told an interviewer.

“And I, of course, am like... 'I can do it again.' And I never broke through in the same way again,” she added. “So, at the end of eight hours of singing the song, we realized we could have finished after the first 20 minutes.”Hathaway's Oscar win is certain to catapult her into the top tier of Hollywood actresses.

Born in Brooklyn in 1982, the daughter of a lawyer father and actress mother, Hathaway was drawn to acting early on, participating in dozens of school plays before heading to college.

Her first film role came in 2001's Disney film “The Other Side of Heaven.”Around this time she successfully auctioned for the lead in “The Princess Diaries,” the comedy-drama that effectively launched her career.

After a series of family-oriented films, most notably 2004's “Ella Enchanted” and a sequel to “The Princess Diaries,” Hathaway's career took a new direction with a shift towards more adult fare.

In 2005, she appeared as a spoiled socialite in “Havoc,” which controversially featured several nude scenes, before she saddled up for Ang Lee's gay cowboy drama “Brokeback Mountain.”Her next film was the hit 2006 comedy “The Devil Wears Prada,” where she played the harassed assistant to multiple Oscar-winning Meryl Streep's tyrannical fashionista.

Hathaway said she took the role specifically for the opportunity to work with Streep. “Everything that I have ever hoped to accomplish, she has done and done better than anyone I have ever seen,” she said.

In 2007, Hathaway played English author Jane Austen in “Becoming Jane”before a trio of films the following year - the spy comedy “Get Smart,” the critical dud “Passengers” and “Rachel Getting Married.””Rachel Getting Married” earned her a first Oscar nomination, for leading actress, but she lost out to Britain's Kate Winslet, after a year clouded by controversy surrounding then boyfriend Raffaello Follieri, jailed for fraud.

In 2010, she was equally busy, playing the White Queen in Tim Burton's “Alice in Wonderland,” while 2011 saw her in romance “One Day,” followed by her 2012 turn as Selena in “The Dark Knight Rises.”She also leant her voice to animated hit “Rio” in 2011, as well as to TV series “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy.” Her next film role after “Les Miz” is a reprise of long-lashed macaw Jewel in “Rio 2,” due out in 2014.

On Sunday, Hathaway bested fellow nominees Amy Adams for “The Master,”Sally Field for “Lincoln,” Helen Hunt for “The Sessions,” and Jacki Weaver for “Silver Linings Playbook.”

Other winners

Animated Short Film: "Paperman."

Visual Effects: "Life of Pi."

Costume: "Anna Karenina."

Makeup and Hairstyling: "Les Miserables."

Live Action Short Film: "Curfew."

Documentary (short subject): "Inocente."

Documentary Feature: "Searching for Sugar Man."

'Amour' wins Oscar for best foreign language film

LOS ANGELES: Michael Haneke's brutal depiction of an aging couple, "Amour," has won the Academy Award for best foreign language film.

It's the second time an Austrian film has won the best foreign language film award, following "The Counterfeiters" in 2008.

Though "Amour" was Austria's submission, it was a multinational production. The film's German-born director is Austrian, but it's in French and stars two French film legends,Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant.

They play a loving, elderly Parisian couple, one of whom has a stroke. "Amour" won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and received a total of five Oscar nominations, including best picture.

The other nominees Sunday night were Norway's "Kon-Tiki," Chile's "No," Denmark's "A Royal Affair" and Canada's "War Witch."

'Sugar Man' wins Oscar for best documentary

LOS ANGELES: "Searching for Sugar Man," the heartwarming chronicle of a forgotten musician's rediscovery, has won the Academy Award for best documentary.

Directed by the Swedish filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul, "Searching for Sugar Man" tells the story of the Detroit singer-songwriter Rodriguez who disappeared from public after releasing an album in the early '70s, but developed an unlikely cult following in South Africa.

The other nominees Sunday night were "5 Broken Cameras," ''The Gatekeepers," ''How to Survive a Plague" and "The Invisible War."

The voting process for the documentary category underwent an overhaul this year intended to limit the nomination of obscure films, and ensure that a larger group ofdocumentary filmmakers winnowed the nominees.

Christoph Waltz, "Brave" win early Oscars

LOS ANGELES: Austrian actor Christoph Waltz and animated movie "Brave" took home early Oscars on Sunday as Seth MacFarlane mocked both himself and Hollywood's A-listers in his debut as host of the movie industry's biggest night.

"We participated in a hero's journey, the hero here being Quentin. You scaled the mountain because you're not afraid of it," said Waltz, who has now won two Oscars for roles in Tarantino films.

Waltz beat veterans Robert De Niro, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Alan Arkin and Tommy Lee Jones.

"Brave," the Pixar movie about a feisty Scottish princess, took home the golden statuette for Best Animated Feature.

MacFarlane opened the show with three song and dance numbers, barbed quips about some of Hollywood's biggest stars and running jokes about his own suitability to host the Academy Awards.

"I honestly cannot believe I am here. It's an honor that everyone else said 'no'," said the creator of edgy animated TV series "Family Guy".

But his biggest laugh came in a reference to director Ben Affleck's snub in the directing race for his Iran hostage thriller "Argo."

"The story was so top secret that the film's director was unknown to the Academy!" MacFarlane quipped.

Presidential drama "Lincoln" went into Sunday's three-hour plus ceremony with a leading 12 nominations, including a directing nod for double Oscar winner Steven Spielberg.

But its front-runner Best Picture status has been dented by the six-week victory streak enjoyed at other Hollywood awards by "Argo."

The thriller, once considered an underdog when Affleck was overlooked in the Oscar directing category, is now thought to have the edge.

Best Picture, the top prize, will be announced at the end of the roughly three-hour live ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

If "Argo" does prevail, it will be the first movie to win Best Picture without its director even getting a nomination since "Driving Miss Daisy" in 1990.

Musical "Les Miserables," comedy "Silver Linings Playbook," shipwreck tale "Life of Pi," Osama bin laden thriller "Zero Dark Thirty," slavery Western "Django Unchained," indie film "Beasts of the Southern Wild," and "Amour" round out the contenders for the best film of 2012.

DANIEL DAY-LEWIS, ANNE HATHAWAY WAIT

After several years of nominating little-seen movies, this year's nine Best Picture contenders have pulled in more than $2 billion in tickets worldwide.

Oscar producers hope the popularity of the leading movies, together with a show packed with musical numbers and a James Bond movie tribute, will make for a big TV audience for broadcaster ABC

Upsets could be in store later on Sunday by France's Emmanuelle Riva, 86, in the Best Actress contest.

Riva, star of the harrowing Austrian entry "Amour," emerged as a dark horse in the past few days in a race that had been seen as a battle between "Zero Dark Thirty" actress Chastain and Jennifer Lawrence of "Silver Linings Playbook."

A win by Riva would make her the oldest person ever to win an acting Oscar.

"Amour," the story of how an elderly couple cope with the effects of the wife's debilitating strokes, is considered the overwhelming favorite for Best Foreign Language film.

Few surprises are expected in the Best Actor race and Best Supporting actress categories.

Daniel Day-Lewis as US President Abraham Lincoln is considered an unstoppable force to become the first man to win three Best Actor Oscars.

Anne Hathaway, who starved herself and chopped off her long brown locks to play tragic heroine Fantine in "Les Miserables," is considered the overwhelming favorite to win her first Oscar for her supporting role in the screen version of the popular stage musical.

The Oscar winners were chosen in secret ballots by some 5,800 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.