Stars Strut on Oscar Red Carpet
The Academy Awards returned to full-glamour mode Sunday after two years in which Hollywood’s prom night was muted by world events – the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks in 2002 and the Iraq war in 2003.
Celebrities were strutting the red carpet again after Oscar organizers scrapped its glitzy arrivals area last year in deference to the U.S.-led war effort in Iraq. With the passage of time, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences figured it was safe to make merry again for the 76th annual Oscars.
“Hollywood was hiding for a couple of years,” said Owen Wilson, who was strolling the red carpet with Ben Stiller, his co-star in the big-screen version of “Starsky & Hutch,” opening Friday. “Hollywood’s back. I think that’s the story.”
Stars mingling on the red carpet included last year’s top acting winners, Nicole Kidman and Adrien Brody. Also, Robin Williams, Julianne Moore, Will Smith, and Elijah Wood and Sean Astin, who played the main hobbits in “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.” Naomi Watts, a best-actress nominee for “21 Grams,” arrived with her boyfriend, actor Heath Ledger. And an extremely pregnant Marcia Gay Harden, nominated for supporting actress for “Mystic River,” arrived about a month before she’s due to give birth to twins.
“Return of the King” led the Oscar pack with 11 nominations. The film had strong support across-the-board among the 5,800 actors, writers, filmmakers, musicians and others who choose Oscar winners.
“I love `Lord of the Rings,’” said Shohreh Aghdashloo, a supporting-actress nominee for “House of Sand and Fog.”"I’m rooting for it.”
The closing chapter of Peter Jackson’s epic adapted from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth saga, “Return of the King” has dominated earlier Hollywood awards.
A best-picture win would be the first ever for the fantasy genre, generally overlooked by Oscar voters who favor heavy drama over otherworldly stories. Only a handful of fantasy or science-fiction tales have earned best-picture nominations, among them “The Wizard of Oz,”"Star Wars,”"E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” and the first two “Lord of the Rings” installments, “The Fellowship of the Ring” and “The Two Towers.”
Also competing for best picture were “Lost in Translation,” a comic drama of oddball friendship between Americans in Tokyo; “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” a rousing Napoleonic naval adventure; “Mystic River,” a brooding thriller about three childhood friends reunited as adults by a murder investigation; and “Seabiscuit,” the uplifting story of the underdog Depression-era racehorse.
Front-runners in the acting categories included Charlize Theron for best actress as serial killer Aileen Wuornos in “Monster,” Tim Robbins for supporting actor as a man tormented by childhood trauma in “Mystic River” and Renee Zellweger for supporting actress as a hardy Confederate woman in the Civil War saga “Cold Mountain.”
Sean Penn, long viewed as the best-actor favorite for his role as a vengeful father in “Mystic River,” faced fresh competition from Johnny Depp as a punch-drunk buccaneer in “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.” Depp won last weekend’s Screen Actors Guild Award over Penn, while Bill Murray as a washed-up actor in “Lost in Translation” also was a strong competitor for best actor.
The Oscars came three weeks earlier this year after academy officials decided to move them up from the traditional late-March date. The move was intended to boost sagging television ratings for the Oscar broadcast, with academy executives figuring the earlier ceremony would make the show a fresher draw for audiences worn out by Hollywood’s prolonged awards season.
ABC’s broadcast of the ceremony incorporated a five-second tape delay so censors could edit out anything objectionable. The delay was implemented after the Super Bowl halftime incident, in which Justin Timberlake tore off part of Janet Jackson’s bustier and exposed her breast.