Day-Lewis Leads Night of Triumph for British ; Six Oscars for Home-Grown Talent
By SHERNA NOAH
DANIEL DAY-LEWIS and Tilda Swinton swept to Oscars victory on a triumphant night for British talent.
Day-Lewis won his second best actor award, this time for his towering performance as a malevolent oilman in There Will Be Blood.
It was presented by Dame Helen Mirren, last year’s best actress winner for The Queen.
Day-Lewis knelt at her feet, then joked: “That’s the closest I’ll ever come to getting a knighthood.”
Swinton was named best supporting actress for her role as a ruthless corporate lawyer in Michael Clayton.
Unusually, all four acting awards went to Europeans.
Frenchwoman Marion Cotillard won best actress for her performance as singer Edith Piaf in biopic La Vie En Rose, beating Julie Christie, while Spaniard Javier Bardem was named best supporting actor for violent neo-western No Country For Old Men.
A tearful Cotillard told the audience: “Thank you so much, I’m speechless.
It is true there are some angels in this city.”
The 32-year-old became the first French woman to win the best actress Oscar in almost 50 years.
It is thought to be only the second time in Oscars history that the award had gone to a performance in a non-English speaking role, the other winner being Sophia Loren.
No Country For Old Men was the night’s big winner – also taking home the awards for best picture, best adapted screenplay and best director for brothers Joel and Ethan Coen.
The film, starring Tommy Lee Jones, and about a drug deal that goes wrong and its bloody aftermath, has been described as one of the best films in the Coen brothers’ career.
Their films over the years have included Fargo, Blood Simple and O Brother, Where Art Thou?.
Bardem joked in his acceptance speech: “Thank you to the Coens for being crazy enough to think that I could do this and for putting one of the most horrible haircuts in history on my head.”
There were four other British wins on the night – Alexandra Byrne for costume design (Elizabeth: The Golden Age); Jan Archibald for make-up (La Vie En Rose); Ben Morris for visual effects (The Golden Compass); and Suzie Templeton and Hugh Welchman for animated short film Peter & The Wolf.
Welchman said: “This is a fairytale ending for us.”
Atonement, the film starring Keira Knightley and James McAvoy and adapted from the novel by Ian McEwan, only took one of its seven nominations, for best music (score).
Irish singer and guitarist Glen Hansard won best song for Falling Slowly, from the music-infused Irish film Once.
Other winners included former stripper Diablo Cody, who won best original screenplay for teen pregnancy film Juno. US sound mixer Kevin O’Connell extended his dubious record of Oscar failure – he was nominated last night for the 20th time, on this occasion for Transformers, but came away empty-handed yet again.
Comedian Jon Stewart hosted the 80th Academy Awards from the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles.
The butt of Stewart’s jokes included US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton.
Referring to Julie Christie film Away From Her, about a woman suffering from Alzheimer’s, he said: “It’s the moving story of a woman who forgets her own husband. Hillary Clinton called it the feelgood movie of the year.”
This is a fairytale ending for us
(c) 2008 Daily Post; Liverpool. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.