77th Academy Awards

The 77th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film for 2004, were held on February 27, 2005, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California. They were hosted by comedian Chris Rock. The nominees were announced on January 25, 2005. Martin Scorsese's biopic of the eccentric Howard Hughes, The Aviator, led the pack with eleven nominations including Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Picture. Marc Forster's Finding Neverland and Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby each had seven nominations. Ray and Sideways rounded out the nominees for Best Picture.


Million Dollar Baby is an Academy Award winning 2004 dramatic film directed by Clint Eastwood. The film stars Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, and Morgan Freeman. It is the story of an under-appreciated boxing trainer, his elusive past and his quest for atonement in helping an underdog amateur female boxer (the film's title character) achieve her fragile dream of becoming a professional. The film won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The screenplay was written by Paul Haggis, based on short stories by F.X. Toole, the pen name of fight manager and "cutman" Jerry Boyd. Originally published under the title Rope Burns, the stories have since been republished under the movie's title. Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), a female amateur who aspires to prove her worth by becoming a successful boxer, is taken in by Frank Dunn (Clint Eastwood), a down-and-out boxing trainer who has been cast aside by most of society, including his estranged daughter Katie. Dunn aids Maggie in realizing her goal while developing a stronger-than-blood bond. Initially, Dunn is dispassionate toward Maggie because she is a 31-year-old female. Maggie, however, perseveres in her attempts to gain Dunn's favor by training each day in his gym, even when others discourage her. Frank's friend and employee, ex-boxer Eddie "Scrap Iron" Dupris (Morgan Freeman) narrates the story in non-dialogue scenes. Million Dollar Baby received the award for Best Picture of 2004 at the 77th Academy Awards. Eastwood was awarded his second Directing Oscar for the film and also received a Best Actor nomination. Swank and Freeman received Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor Oscars, respectively. The film was also nominated for the Film Editing and Writing Adapted Screenplay awards. The film beat what many thought to be the front-runner, Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, which had won the Golden Globe and the BAFTA for Best Drama.


Jamie Foxx is an American actor, singer, and stand-up comic. Foxx is possibly best known for his portrayal of musician Ray Charles in Ray, and for his collaborations with director Michael Mann. With Ray, he became one of the few African-Americans to win the Academy Award for Best Actor. Foxx's first dramatic role came in Oliver Stone's 1999 film Any Given Sunday, where he played a heavy-partying football player. He was cast in the role in part because of his background as a football player. Foxx has since evolved into a respected dramatic actor. Following Any Given Sunday, Foxx was featured as taxi driver Max Durocher in the film Collateral alongside Tom Cruise, for which he received outstanding reviews and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His standout performance, however, was his portrayal of Ray Charles in the biopic Ray (2004), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Foxx is the second male, and the first African American, in history to receive two acting Oscar nominations in the same year for two different movies, Collateral and Ray. The only other male actor to achieve this was Al Pacino. Following this success, Foxx appeared in three more movies: Jarhead, Miami Vice, and Dreamgirls which were hits at the box office and lifted Foxx even higher as a bankable star in Hollywood. 2007 brought him the lead role in the film The Kingdom, opposite Chris Cooper and Jennifer Garner.


Morgan Freeman is an Academy Award-, Golden Globe-, and Screen Actors Guild Award-winning American actor, film director, and film narrator. Noted for his reserved demeanor and authoritative speaking voice, Freeman has become one of Hollywood's most popular and respected actors. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Freeman began playing prominent supporting roles in many feature films, earning him a reputation for depicting wise and fatherly characters. As he gained fame, he went on to bigger roles in films such as the chauffeur Hoke in Driving Miss Daisy, and Sergeant Major Rawlins in Glory (both in 1989). In 1994 he portrayed Red, the redeemed convict in the acclaimed The Shawshank Redemption. His star power was already confirmed as he starred in some of the biggest films of the 1990s, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Se7en, and Deep Impact. After three previous nominations – a supporting actor nomination for Street Smart (1987), and leading actor nominations for Driving Miss Daisy (1989), and The Shawshank Redemption (1994) – he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Million Dollar Baby. Freeman is recognized for his distinctive voice, making him a frequent choice for narration. In 2005 alone, he provided narration for two of the most successful films of the year, War of the Worlds and the Academy Award-winning documentary film March of the Penguins. Freeman has recently been well known for his role as God in the hit movie Bruce Almighty and its sequel, Evan Almighty, as well as his role as Lucius Fox in the critical and commercial success Batman Begins and its upcoming sequel, The Dark Knight. He starred in Rob Reiner's 2007 film The Bucket List, opposite Jack Nicholson, playing terminal cancer patients who must fulfill their lists of goals. Freeman was married to Jeanette Adair Bradshaw from October 22, 1967, until 1979. He has been married to Myrna Colley-Lee since June 16, 1984. He has two sons, Alfonso and Saifoulaye, from previous relationships. He adopted his first wife's daughter, Deena, and the couple also had a fourth child, Morgana.


Cate Blanchett, is an Academy Award- and Golden Globe Award-winning Australian actress. She has won various other awards, most notably two SAGs and two BAFTAs, as well as the Volpi Cup at 64th Venice International Film Festival. She came to international attention in the 1998 film Elizabeth, directed by Shekhar Kapur, in which she played Elizabeth I of England. She is also well known for her portrayals of the elf queen Galadriel in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, a role which brought her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Blanchett is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful women of all time. Blanchett made her international film debut as an Australian nurse captured by the Japanese in a production of Paradise Road directed by Bruce Beresford, co-starring Glenn Close and Frances McDormand. Her first high-profile role was as Elizabeth I of England in the 1998 movie Elizabeth, which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Blanchett lost out to Gwyneth Paltrow for her role in Shakespeare in Love but won a British Academy (BAFTA) Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama. The following year, Blanchett was nominated for another BAFTA Award for her supporting role in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Already an acclaimed actress, Blanchett received a host of new fans when she appeared in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings. She played the role of the High Elf Queen Galadriel in all three films, which hold the record as the highest grossing film trilogy of all time. In 2005, she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator. This made Blanchett the first person ever to garner an Academy Award for playing a previous Oscar-winning actor/actress. In 2006 she starred in both Babel opposite Brad Pitt, and Notes on a Scandal playing Sheba Hart opposite Dame Judi Dench. Coincidentally, Dench won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for playing Elizabeth I, the same year Blanchett lost for playing the same historical figure, albeit in a different category. Blanchett received her third Academy Award nomination for her performance in the film (Dench was also Oscar nominated). In 2007, she won the Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival for portraying one of six incarnations of Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes' feature film I'm Not There and also reprised her role as Elizabeth I in the sequel to Elizabeth entitled Elizabeth: the Golden Age. Cate Blanchett received double Oscar nominations on January 23, 2008, including Best Actress for her regal performance in Elizabeth: the Golden Age and Best Supporting actress for her portrayal of music legend Bob Dylan in I'm Not There, putting the Australian actress on track to make Academy Awards history. Blanchett's husband is playwright and screenwriter Andrew Upton, whom she met in 1996 while she was performing in a production of The Seagull. The two were married on December 29, 1997. Their first child, Dashiell John, was born on December 3, 2001; their second child, Roman Robert, was born on April 23, 2004. She is now currently pregnant with her third child, who is due in April 2008.


The Sea Inside (Spanish: Mar adentro) is a 2004 film by the Spanish/Chilean director Alejandro Amenábar. It is based on the real-life story of Ramón Sampedro (played by Javier Bardem), a Spanish ship mechanic left quadriplegic after a diving accident who fought a 28-year campaign in support of euthanasia and his right to end his own life.The Sea Inside won the 2004 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, the 2004 Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film, and 14 Goya Awards.


"Al otro lado del río" (English: On the other side of the river) is a song written and performed by Uruguayan singer Jorge Drexler for the film The Motorcycle Diaries (2004). Beside the film's soundtrack, it can also be found in Drexler's seventh album Eco, in the soundtrack the great bassist and double bassist Jeff Eckels preformed. "Al otro lado del río" received the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 77th ceremony, becoming the first song in Spanish and the second in a foreign language to receive such an honor.

76th Academy Awards

The 76th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film for 2003, were held on February 29, 2004 (the first ceremony in 62 years to occur at a different date rather than its longtime March or April date) at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California. They were hosted by comedian Billy Crystal. The big contenders for the 76th Academy Awards (for the best achievement in film in 2003) included The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and Lost in Translation, and in the highly competitive Best Actor category, strong work from Johnny Depp, Sean Penn and Jude Law.


The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King swept all 11 categories in which it was nominated. It matched the record 11 wins of Titanic and Ben-Hur and beat the previous record of Gigi and The Last Emperor for the largest sweep of every nominated category, both of which had achieved nine-for-nine. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is an epic fantasy film directed by Peter Jackson. It is primarily based on the third volume of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (but also includes material from the second volume), and it is the concluding film in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. It follows The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers and was filmed simultaneously with them. As Sauron launches the final stages of his conquest of Middle-earth, Gandalf the Wizard and Théoden King of Rohan step up their forces to help defend Gondor's capital Minas Tirith from this threat. Aragorn must finally take up the throne of Gondor and summons an army of ghosts to help him defeat Sauron. Ultimately, even with full strength of arms, they find they cannot win; it comes down to the Hobbits Frodo and Sam, who themselves face the burden of the Ring and the treachery of Gollum, to finally destroy the One Ring in Mordor. Released on December 17, 2003, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King became one of the most critically acclaimed films and greatest box-office successes of all time. It swept all eleven Academy Awards it was nominated for, which ties it with only Titanic and Ben-Hur for most Academy Awards ever won. It also won the Academy Award for Best Picture, the only time in history a fantasy film has done so. It also became the second highest grossing movie worldwide of all time behind Titanic, unadjusted for inflation and the most successful film in the series.


Peter Jackson is an Academy Award-winning New Zealand filmmaker best known as the director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which he, along with Fran Walsh, his long time partner, and Philippa Boyens, adapted from the novels by J. R. R. Tolkien. He is also known for his 2005 remake of King Kong. Jackson first gained attention with his "splatstick" horror comedies, and came to prominence with success and critical acclaim for Heavenly Creatures, for which he shared an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen with Walsh. Jackson's eldest son Billy (born 1995), has had cameo appearances in every one of his parents' films since his birth, namely The Frighteners (1996), The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, and King Kong. His daughter Katie (born 1996) appeared in all the above films, except The Frighteners.


Sean Penn is an Academy Award-winning American film actor and director, known for playing intense and unsympathetic characters. He was awarded an Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in Mystic River. Penn has also been nominated for three other Academy Awards in recognition of his roles in I Am Sam, Sweet and Lowdown and Dead Man Walking. Penn launched his career with the 1981 film Taps, followed a year later with the comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High in the role of Jeff Spicoli and has since starred in over forty movies. In 1985, Penn gave a memorable performance in the role of Andrew Daulton Lee in The Falcon and the Snowman. Lee was a former drug dealer by trade, convicted of espionage for the Soviet Union and was originally sentenced to life in prison. Penn's personal life began to attract media attention when he married pop star Madonna in 1985. The relationship was marred by violent outbursts against the press,Penn and Madonna divorced in 1989. He soon began a relationship with Robin Wright, and their first child, Dylan Frances, was born in 1991. Their second child, Hopper Jack, was born in 1993. Penn and Wright married in 1996 and live in Ross, California. On December 27, 2007, the couple's representative announced that the Penns were divorcing.


Charlize Theron is a South African actress and former fashion model with American citizenship. She is well-known for her portrayal of the serial killing lesbian Aileen Wuornos in the film Monster, for which she won an Academy Award. She was cast in her first film part, a non-speaking role in the direct-to-video film Children of the Corn III. Larger roles in widely released Hollywood films followed, and her career skyrocketed in the late 1990s with box office successes like The Devil's Advocate (1997), Mighty Joe Young (1998), and The Cider House Rules. After appearing in a few notable films, Theron starred as the lesbian serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster (2003). For this role, Theron won the Best Actress Oscar at the 76th Academy Awards in February 2004, as well as the SAG Award and the Golden Globe Award. She is the first South African to win an Oscar for Best Actress. Theron now resides in Los Angeles in the home of late 1930's actress Helen Twelvetrees, with her long-time boyfriend Stuart Townsend, with whom she starred in the 2004 film Head in the Clouds, as well as in the 2002 film Trapped.


Tim Robbins is an Academy Award-winning American actor, screenwriter, director, producer, activist, and musician. He is the longtime partner of actress Susan Sarandon, with whom he shares liberal political views. He received critical acclaim and won the Best Actor Award at Cannes for his starring role as an amoral movie executive in Robert Altman's 1992 film The Player. He made his directorial and screenwriting debut with 1992's Bob Roberts, a mockumentary about a right-wing senatorial candidate. Robbins then starred alongside Morgan Freeman in the critically acclaimed The Shawshank Redemption (1994), which was based on Stephen King's short story. Robbins has written, produced, and directed several films with strong social content, such as the critically acclaimed capital punishment saga Dead Man Walking (1995), starring Sarandon and Sean Penn. The film earned him a Oscar nomination for Best Director. His next directorial effort was 1999's Depression-era musical Cradle Will Rock. Robbins has also appeared in mainstream Hollywood thrillers, such as 1999's Arlington Road (as a terrorist) and 2001's Antitrust (as a malicious computer tycoon). Robbins has also acted in and directed several Actors' Gang theater productions. Robbins won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar and the SAG Award for his work in Mystic River (2003), as a man traumatized from having been molested as a child.


Renée Zellweger is an American actress who has won an Academy Award and established herself as one of the highest-paid female Hollywood actors in recent years. While still in Texas, Zellweger appeared in several films. In 1993, she made a brief appearance in the comedy-drama film Dazed and Confused, then had a minor role in ABC TV mini series named Murder in the Heartland. The following year, she appeared in Reality Bites, the directorial debut of Ben Stiller and the biopic film 8 Seconds, directed by John G. Avildsen. Zellweger's first main part in a movie came with the 1994 horror movie Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, in which she acted alongside Matthew McConaughey. She played Jenny, a teenager who leaves a prom early with three friends and ended up getting into a car accident, which leads to their meeting a murderous family. In her next movie was Love and a .45, in which she played the role of Starlene Cheatham, a woman who plans a robbery with her boyfriend. The performance earned her an Independent Spirit Award for Best Debut Performance. She subsequently moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting, winning roles in the films Empire Records, The Whole Wide World. Zellweger first became widely known to audiences around the world with her role in 1996's Jerry Maguire, where she played the romantic interest of Tom Cruise's character. She won the role over Mira Sorvino and Marisa Tomei. Since then, Zellweger has won acclaim in roles such as One True Thing opposite William Hurt and Meryl Streep, and in Neil LaBute's Nurse Betty opposite Morgan Freeman. The role garnered the actress her first of three Golden Globe Awards. In 2001, Zellweger gained the prized lead role as Bridget Jones, playing alongside Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, in the British romantic comedy film Bridget Jones's Diary, a film that is based on the 1996 novel Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding, amid much controversy since she was neither British nor overweight. As a result of her considerable efforts to effect author Helen Fielding's character, Zellweger caught the attention of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and received her first Best Actress Academy Award nomination. In 2002, she starred with Michelle Pfeiffer in White Oleander and in Rob Marshall's Academy Award for Best Picture winning film Chicago opposite Catherine Zeta Jones, Richard Gere, Queen Latifah, and John C. Reilly. Zellweger earned her second Academy Award nomination as Best Actress, as well as the Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe Award. In 2004, Zellweger finally received an Academy Award, this time as Best Supporting Actress in Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain opposite Jude Law and Nicole Kidman. Zellweger has since starred in the sequel to Bridget Jones' Diary in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, lent her voice to the DreamWorks animated features Shark Tale and Bee Movie, and starred in the 2005 Ron Howard film Cinderella Man opposite Russell Crowe and Paul Giamatti. On May 9, 2005, Zellweger married singer Kenny Chesney in a ceremony at the island of St. John. They had met in January at a tsunami relief benefit concert. On September 15, 2005, after only four months of marriage, they announced their plans for an annulment. The annulment was finalized in late December 2005.


The Barbarian Invasions is a French Canadian comedy/drama film directed by Denys Arcand. It is the sequel to Arcand's earlier award-winning film The Decline of the American Empire and is followed by Days of Darkness. The film was produced by companies from both Canada and France, including Téléfilm Canada, Société Radio-Canada and Canal+. It was released in 2003 and won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 76th Academy Awards in 2004.


"Into the West" is a song written by Fran Walsh, Howard Shore and Annie Lennox, and performed by Lennox herself during the closing credits of the movie The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. It has also been recorded by New Zealand singers Hayley Westenra and Yulia Townsend. The song was conceived as a bittersweet Elvish lament sung by Galadriel for those who have sailed across the Sundering Sea. Several phrases from the song are taken from the last chapter of Return of the King. The song won the Oscar for Best Original Song at the 76th Academy Awards, one of the movie's 11 Academy Awards.

75th Academy Awards

The 75th Academy Awards ceremony was originally intended to be an especially festive celebration of the ceremony's 75th anniversary. However, it was muted five days before the show by the onset of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which coincided almost exactly with the ceremony. As a result, the hype and tone of the show were scaled back, and some Award winners (notably Adrien Brody and Michael Moore) took the opportunity to voice their opposition to the invasion. The ceremony received very low ratings, falling to second place in the Nielsen Ratings behind American Idol.


Chicago is a 2002 musical film released by Miramax Films. First released in limited cities on June 27, 2002, Chicago opened in wide release on January 24, 2003. An adaptation of the satirical stage musical Chicago, the film explores the themes of celebrity and scandal in Jazz age Chicago. Directed and choreographed by Rob Marshall, and adapted for film by screenwriter Bill Condon, Chicago won six Academy Awards in 2003, including Best Picture. The film was the first musical film to win the Best Picture Oscar since Oliver! (1968). Chicago centers around Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart, two murderesses who find themselves on death row together in 1920s Chicago. Velma, a professional vaudevillian, and Roxie, a housewife with aspirations of being a star, fight for the fame that will keep them from the gallows. The film stars Catherine Zeta-Jones, Renée Zellweger, and Richard Gere, also featuring Queen Latifah, John C. Reilly, Lucy Liu, Taye Diggs, Colm Feore, and Mýa.


Roman Polanski is an Academy Award-winning French-born Polish film director, writer, actor, and producer. After beginning his career in Poland, Polanski became a celebrated arthouse filmmaker, and Hollywood director of such films as Rosemary's Baby (1968) and Chinatown (1974). He is also known for his tumultuous personal life. In 1969, his wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered by the Manson Family. In 1978, after pleading guilty to having unlawful sexual intercourse with a thirteen year old girl, Polanski fled to France, where he now resides and is considered by US authorities to be a fugitive from justice. Because he faces jail time if he returns to the United States, he has continued to direct films in Europe, including Frantic (1988), Death and the Maiden (1994), the Academy Award-winning and Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or-winning The Pianist (2002), and Oliver Twist (2005). In May 2002, Polanski won the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) award at the Cannes Film Festival for The Pianist, for which he also took Césars for Best Film and Best Director, and later won the 2002 Academy Award for Directing. He did not attend the Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood. After the announcement of the "Best Director Award", Polanski received a standing ovation from most of those present in the theater.


Adrien Brody is an American actor. Brody hovered on the brink of stardom, receiving an Independent Spirit Award nomination for his role in the 1998 film Restaurant and later praise for his roles in Spike Lee's Summer of Sam and Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line. He received widespread recognition when he was cast as the lead in Roman Polanski's The Pianist (2002). To prepare for the role, Brody withdrew for months, gave up his apartment and his car, learned how to play Chopin on the piano, and lost 29 lbs (13 kg). The role won him an Academy Award for Best Actor, making him the youngest actor ever to win the award. He also won a César Award for his performance, becoming the only American actor to win one. Throughout his career, Brody has been compared to Al Pacino for his unique looks and method acting. He is also widely known for giving presenter Halle Berry a back-breaking kiss after winning his Best Actor Oscar, and as the spokesman for fashion brand Ermenegildo Zegna. After The Pianist Brody has appeared in three very different movies. He played Noah Percy, a mentally disabled young man in the movie The Village by M. Night Shyamalan, shell-shocked war veteran Jack Starks in The Jacket, and writer Jack Driscoll in the 2005 King Kong remake.


Nicole Kidman is an Academy Award-winning Australian actress and occasional singer. In 2006, she became the highest paid actress in the film industry. After making various appearances in film and television, Kidman received her breakthrough role in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm. Since then, Kidman's acting career has developed greatly. Her performances in several films, such as To Die For (1995), Moulin Rouge! (2001), and The Hours (2002), have won her not only critical acclaim but also many film awards. She is also well-known for her former high-profile marriage to Tom Cruise, as well as her current marriage to singer Keith Urban. In 1990, she appeared opposite Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder, a stock car racing movie. After this, Kidman starred with Cruise in Ron Howard's Far and Away (1992). In 1995, Kidman featured in the ensemble cast of Batman Forever. In 2002, Kidman received an Academy Award nomination for her performance in the 2001 musical film Moulin Rouge!, in which she played the courtesan Satine opposite Ewan McGregor. Consequently, Kidman received her second Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. The same year, she had a well-received starring role in the horror film The Others. The following year, Kidman won critical praise for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in The Hours, in which the prosthetics applied to her made her almost unrecognizable. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for this role, along with a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA, and numerous critics awards. Kidman became the first Australian actress to win an Academy Award.


Chris Cooper is an Academy Award-winning American film actor. He became well known in the late 1990s, having appeared in supporting performances in several major Hollywood films, including American Beauty, Capote, and Seabiscuit. Some of his standout performances include Money Train as a psychotic pyromaniac who terrifies toll booth operators, Lone Star in a rare leading role as a Texas sheriff charged with solving a decades old case, and American Beauty as a homophobic Colonel of the United States Marine Corps. Cooper won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and a Golden Globe Award in 2003 for playing the role of John Laroche in Adaptation. Cooper also appeared in The Bourne Identity in 2002 as a ruthless CIA special ops director, a role he reprised (in flashbacks) in The Bourne Supremacy. Cooper is often typecast as a government/military character. Cooper was busy in 2005, having appeared in three well-received and acclaimed films: Jarhead (reuniting him with American Beauty director Sam Mendes and October Sky actor Jake Gyllenhaal), Capote and Syriana. He was in the thriller Breach, playing real-life FBI operative and spy Robert Hanssen.


Catherine Zeta-Jones is an Academy Award-winning Welsh actress based predominantly in the United States. She began her career on stage at an early age. After starring in a number of UK and US television films and small roles in films, she came to prominence with roles in Hollywood movies such as The Phantom, The Mask of Zorro, and Entrapment in the late 1990s. She won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for portraying Velma Kelly in the 2002 film adaptation of Chicago, making her the first and only Welsh actress to do so in that category. In 2003, she voiced Marina in Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas opposite Brad Pitt, as well as starring in Intolerable Cruelty with George Clooney. In 2004 she was in The Terminal, as well as Ocean's Twelve, the sequel to Ocean's Eleven. In 2005, she reprised her role as Elena in The Legend of Zorro, the sequel to The Mask of Zorro. In 2007, she starred in the romantic comedy No Reservations, a remake of the German film Mostly Martha. Zeta-Jones is married to Michael Douglas, with whom she shares a birthday. They have two children - Dylan (named after Dylan Thomas) and Carys.


Nowhere in Africa is an epic 2001 German film directed by Caroline Link and based on the autobiographical novel of the same name by Stefanie Zweig. It tells the story of a Jewish family that emigrates to Kenya during World War II to escape the Nazis and run a farm. The film won an 2002 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.



"Lose Yourself" is an Academy Award and Grammy Award winning hip hop song written and produced by Eminem. It was released in 2002 as part of the soundtrack to the Academy Award-winning film 8 Mile, also starring Eminem. The song had additional production by Luis Resto and Jeff Bass. The song achieved significant success, reaching the top of many charts around the world, including the Billboard Hot 100, the UK Singles Chart, and the United World Chart, among others. It won an Academy Award for Best Original Song, two Grammy Awards, and two other Grammy nominations.

74th Academy Awards

The 74th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film for 2001, were held on March 24, 2002, for the first time at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California. They were hosted by Whoopi Goldberg. The ceremony was historically notable for honoring two African American actors for their Leading Roles. Laura Ziskin (Spider-Man producer) was executive producer for the first time making her the first woman to solo produce the telecast. She also produced the 2007 telecast. The telecast, which was shown in the United States on ABC, is currently the longest to date. Furthermore the tone of this show was quieted by the recent occurrence of the attacks on September 11. Just as the 53rd Primetime Emmy Awards were postponed in 2001, and the Oscar nominations were supposed to come out just two months after the attacks, many wondered if the Oscars would be postponed as well. Frank Pierson, then president of the Academy stated that the Oscars would proceed as scheduled, and to postpone would mean that "the terrorists have won". However, the red carpet festivities prior to the awards were severely curtailed.



A Beautiful Mind is a 2001 American biographical film about John Forbes Nash, the Nobel Laureate (Economics) mathematician. The film was directed by Ron Howard and written by Akiva Goldsman. It was inspired by a bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-nominated 1998 book of the same name by Sylvia Nasar. The film stars Russell Crowe, along with Jennifer Connelly, Ed Harris and Paul Bettany. The story begins in the early years of Nash's life at Princeton University as he develops his "original idea" that will revolutionize the world of mathematics. Later, Nash develops schizophrenia and endures paranoid and delusional episodes while painfully watching the loss and burden his condition brings on his wife and friends. The film opened in US cinemas on December 21, 2001. It was well received by critics, and went on to win four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actress. It was also nominated for Best Leading Actor, Best Editing, Best Makeup, and Best Score. The film has been criticized for its inaccurate portrayal of some aspects of Nash's life.



Ron Howard is an American actor and Academy Award-winning film director and producer, known for his roles on sitcoms, movies and television. The naturally red-headed Howard came to prominence in the 1960s as Andy Griffith's son, Opie Taylor, on The Andy Griffith Show, and later in the 1970s as Tom Bosley's son and Henry Winkler's best friend, Richie Cunningham, on Happy Days (a role he played from 1974 to 1980). He attained film success with his role as Steve Bollander in George Lucas' teen movie American Graffiti. Before leaving Happy Days in 1980, Howard made his directing debut with the 1977 project "Grand Theft Auto" (Howard went on to direct several TV movies. His big theatrical break came in 1982 with Night Shift featuring soon-to-be stars such as Michael Keaton and Shelley Long, as well as reuniting Howard with "Happy Days" co-star Henry Winkler. He has since directed a number of high-visibility films, the most acclaimed of which include "Splash", "Willow", "Cocoon", "Apollo 13" (nominated for several Academy Awards), "A Beautiful Mind" (for which he won the Oscar for "Best Director"), and Cinderella Man. His latest film, "The Da Vinci Code", rejoining with "Splash" and "Apollo 13" star Tom Hanks, has been a box office hit earning more than $700 million at the box office, but a critical letdown. On June 7, 1975, Howard wed his high-school sweetheart, Cheryl (née Alley), a writer with a degree in geriatric psychology. They have four children; daughters Bryce Dallas Howard (b. 1981), Jocelyn Carlyle (twin, b. 1985), Paige Carlyle (twin, b. 1985), and son Reed Cross (b. 1987). Their daughters Bryce Dallas Howard and Paige Howard are actresses. In February 2007, Howard became a grandfather when his daughter, Bryce, gave birth to a son.



The ceremony also saw both the Best Actor and Best Actress Oscars awarded to African-American actors for the first time in Academy Award history: Denzel Washington for Training Day and Halle Berry for Monster's Ball. Berry has received Emmy and Golden Globe awards for Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, and an Academy Award for Best Actress in 2002 for her performance in Monster's Ball, becoming the only woman of African-American descent to have won the award for Best Actress. She is one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood and also a Revlon spokeswoman. She is attempting to expand into the production side of Hollywood. Before becoming an actress, Berry entered several beauty contests, finishing runner-up in Miss USA (1986), and winning the Miss USA World 1986 contest. Her breakthrough feature film role was in the 1991 Jungle Fever. This led to roles in The Flintstones (1994), Bulworth (1998), X-Men (2000) and its sequels, and Die Another Day. She also won a worst actress Razzie award in 2005 for Catwoman, and accepted the award in person. Berry has been married twice. Her first marriage, in 1992 to former baseball player David Justice, ended in divorce in 1996. Berry's second marriage was to musician Eric Benét. They had met in 1997, and married in 2001. The couple separated in 2003. The divorce was finalized in January 2005. In November 2005, she began dating French-Canadian supermodel Gabriel Aubry, who is ten years her junior. The couple met at a Versace photoshoot. Berry confirmed in September 2007 that she was three months pregnant with Aubry's child.



Jim Broadbent won as Best Supporting Actor. Broadbent made his film debut in 1978 with a tiny role in Jerzy Skolimowski's The Shout, and made his television debut the following year. He went on to work with Stephen Frears (for television, and in The Hit (1984)) and Terry Gilliam (in Time Bandits (1981) and Brazil (1985) before establishing himself in Mike Leigh's Life Is Sweet (1990). He proved his ability as a character actor in films including The Crying Game (1992), Enchanted April (1992), Bullets Over Broadway (1994), The Borrowers (1997) and Little Voice (1998) before taking a leading role in another Mike Leigh film, Topsy-Turvy (1999). In 2001, Broadbent starred in three of the year's most successful films: Bridget Jones's Diary, Moulin Rouge!, for which he won a BAFTA and Iris, for which he won an Oscar for his portrayal of John Bayley. He is regarded as one of cinema's most reliable character actors and has a reputation of being very easy to work with. On September 17, 2007 it was announced that he will play Horace Slughorn in the sixth Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.



Jennifer Connelly is an American film actress and former child model. Although she has been working in the film industry since she was a teenager and catapulted to fame on the basis of her appearances in films like Labyrinth and Career Opportunities, she did not receive wide exposure for her work until the 2000 drama Requiem for a Dream, and the 2001 biopic A Beautiful Mind, for which she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Connelly starred in two films in 2003: Hulk and House of Sand and Fog. Hulk was something of a box office disappointment, but afforded Connelly the chance to work with noted director Ang Lee. House of Sand and Fog, based on the novel by Andre Dubus III, was reminiscent of much of her independent film work of the late 1990s. Connelly appeared in the 2005 horror film Dark Water, which was based on a Japanese film. In 2006, Connelly appeared in two films, both of which were nominated for multiple Academy Awards. She played a major role in an adaptation of the novel Little Children alongside Kate Winslet. Though her role as Kathy Adamson was very important in the novel, the director gave her character less screen time, instead focusing on the characters played by Winslet and Patrick Wilson. She also played a journalist in Blood Diamond opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. She is married to well-known English actor Paul Bettany (born 1971), whom she met while working on A Beautiful Mind. The couple's son, Stellan, was born on August 5, 2003. She also has a son, Kai (born 1997), from her relationship with photographer David Dugan.



No Man's Land is a war drama that is set in the midst of the Bosnian war in 1993. The film is a parable with a tone of ironic black comedy. The film marked the debut of writer and director Danis Tanović. The film is a co-production between companies in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, Italy, France, Belgium and the UK. No Man's Land won Prix du scénario at the Cannes Film Festival, followed by numerous awards, including the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2001, while in competition with French Amélie. Tanović was presented the Oscar by John Travolta and Sharon Stone. Briefly after, Tanović thanked everyone who worked with him on the film and supported its creation. He ended his acceptance speech by saying, "This is for my country".



If I Didn't Have You is a song from the Pixar and Disney movie, Monsters Inc., written by songwriter and singer Randy Newman. Sung by John Goodman and Billy Crystal, the song helped Newman to win his very first Oscar. Prior to this Oscar win, Randy Newman had previously been nominated for 15 Oscars in the Best Score and Best Song categories, without a single win.

73rd Academy Awards

The 73rd Academy Awards ceremony was the last to take place at the Los Angeles Shrine Auditorium. It was hosted by first-time host Steve Martin, who was nominated for an Emmy Award for his presentation. Notable films receiving Academy Awards at the ceremony included Gladiator, which received 12 nominations and 5 awards, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which received 10 nominations and 4 awards. After a three-year streak of high ratings, the annual ceremony received very low ratings for the first time in four years. This is partially due to the popularity of CBS's Survivor which was number one on the Nielsen Weekly Ratings. The awards show dropped to second place for the first time in broadcasting history (42.93 million viewers; with 21.1% of households watching). The second time the ceremony placed below the top happened in 2003 when it was surpassed by American Idol. The Icelandic pop singer Björk arrived in a gown with a fake swan draped across her. It caused an audience reaction that led to several comments by those participating in the Awards Ceremony.



Gladiator is a 2000 epic film. It is directed by Ridley Scott and stars Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, Oliver Reed, Djimon Hounsou, Derek Jacobi and Richard Harris. Crowe portrays General Maximus Decimus Meridius, friend of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who is betrayed and murdered by the emperor's ambitious son, Commodus (Phoenix). Captured and enslaved along the outer fringes of the Roman empire, Maximus rises through the ranks of the gladiatorial arena to avenge the murder of his family and his Emperor. The film won five Academy Awards in the 73rd Academy Awards ceremony, including the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film's epic scope and intense battle scenes, as well as the emotional core of its performances, received much praise. The film's success may have helped to revive the historical epic genre, with subsequent films such as Troy, Alexander, 300, and Scott's own Kingdom of Heaven.



Steven Soderbergh is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and Academy Award-winning director. It wasn't until Soderbergh came back to Baton Rouge that he conceived the idea for sex, lies, and videotape (1989), which he wrote in eight days. The independent film won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, became a worldwide commercial success and greatly contributed to the 1990s independent film revolution. His commercial slump ended in 1998 with Out of Sight, a stylized adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel, written by Scott Frank and starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. The film was widely praised, though only a moderate box-office success. It reaffirmed Soderbergh's potential, sparking the beginnings of a lucrative artistic partnership between Clooney and Soderbergh. Soderbergh followed up on the success of Out of Sight by making another crime caper, The Limey (1999), from an original screenplay by Lem Dobbs and starring veteran actors Terence Stamp and Peter Fonda. The film was well-received, but not as much as Erin Brockovich (2000), a "Rocky movie" he directed, written by Susannah Grant and starring Julia Roberts in her Oscar-winning role as a single mother taking on industry in a civil action. Later that year, Soderbergh released his most ambitious project yet (with a running time of 147 minutes, the film had 135 speaking parts set in eight different cities), Traffic, a social drama written by Stephen Gaghan and featuring an ensemble cast. Traffic became his most acclaimed movie since sex, lies, videotape, and earned him an Academy Award for Best Director. He was also nominated that same year for Erin Brockovich. He is the only director to have been nominated in the same year for Best Director for two different films by the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes and the Directors Guild of America. It was the first time it had happened at the Oscars in 60 years. Ocean's Eleven (2001), featuring an all-star cast and flashy aesthetics, is Soderbergh's highest grossing movie to date, grossing more than $183 million. The film's star, George Clooney, subsequently appeared in Solaris (2002), marking the third time the two have headlined a film. In the same year, Soderbergh made Full Frontal which was shot mostly on digital video in an improvisional style that deliberately blurred the line between which actors were playing characters and which were playing fictionized versions of themselves. Following up Full Frontal stylistically was Soderbergh next project, K Street (2003), a ten-part political HBO series he co-produced with Clooney. Ocean's Twelve (2004), a sequel to Ocean's Eleven, has followed. The Good German a romantic drama set in post-war Berlin starring Cate Blanchett and Clooney was released in late 2006. The sixth pairing of Clooney and Soderbergh, Ocean's Thirteen, was released in June of 2007.



Russell Crowe is an Academy Award- and Golden Globe-winning New Zealand-born Australian actor. His acting career began in the early 1990s with roles in Australian TV series such as Police Rescue and films such as Romper Stomper. In the late 1990s, he began appearing in US films such as the 1997 movie L.A. Confidential. In the 2000s, he was nominated for three Oscars, and in 2001, he won the Academy Award as Best Actor for his starring role in the film Gladiator. After initial success in Australia, Crowe began acting in American films. He first co-starred with Denzel Washington in Virtuosity in 1995. He went on to become a three-time Oscar nominee, winning the Academy Award as Best Actor in 2001 for Gladiator. Crowe received three consecutive best actor Oscar nominations for The Insider, Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind. Crowe won the best actor award for A Beautiful Mind at the 2002 BAFTA award ceremony. However he failed to win the Oscar that year, losing to Denzel Washington. Within the six year stretch from 1997-2003, he also starred in two other best picture nominees, L.A. Confidential and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, though he was nominated for neither. In 2005 he re-teamed with A Beautiful Mind director Ron Howard for Cinderella Man. In 2006 he re-teamed with Gladiator director Ridley Scott for A Good Year, the first of two consecutive collaborations (the second being American Gangster co-starring again with Denzel Washington, released in late 2007). On 7 April 2003, his 39th birthday, Crowe married Australian singer and actress Danielle Spencer. Crowe met Spencer while filming The Crossing (1990). Crowe and Spencer have two sons: Charles "Charlie" Spencer Crowe (born 21 December 2003) and Tennyson Spencer Crowe (born 7 July 2006).



Julia Roberts is an Academy Award-winning American film actress and former fashion model. She shot to fame during the early 1990s after starring in the romantic comedy, Pretty Woman, opposite Richard Gere, which grossed US$463 million worldwide. She won the Best Actress Academy Award in 2001 for her critically acclaimed turn as the title character in Erin Brockovich and earned Oscar nominations as Best Supporting Actress for Steel Magnolias (1989) and Best Actress for Pretty Woman (1990). Her films, which also include The Pelican Brief, My Best Friend's Wedding, Mystic Pizza, Notting Hill, Runaway Bride, and Ocean's Eleven, have collectively earned box office receipts well over US$2 billion. Roberts's two films released in 2006, The Ant Bully and Charlotte's Web, were both animated features for which she provided only voice acting. Her next film, Charlie Wilson's War, with Tom Hanks and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, directed by Mike Nichols and based on the book by former CBS journalist George Crile was released on December 21, 2007. On June 27, 1993, she married country singer Lyle Lovett; the couple had met only three weeks earlier. The wedding took place on 72-hours' notice and was held in Marion, Indiana, near where Lovett was appearing on tour with his band. Less than two years later, in March 1995, the couple announced their separation. They subsequently divorced. Roberts met her current husband, cameraman Daniel Moder, on the set of her movie The Mexican in 2000 and they began an affair. He and Roberts wed on Fourth of July 2002, at her ranch in Taos, New Mexico. On November 28, 2004, they became the parents of fraternal twins, daughter Hazel Patricia and son Phinnaeus Walter. Their third child, son Henry Daniel Moder, was born on June 18, 2007 in Los Angeles.



Benicio del Toro is an Academy Award- and Golden Globe-winning Puerto Rican actor and film producer. He is best known for his roles as Fred Fenster in The Usual Suspects, Javier Rodriguez Rodriguez in Traffic and Jack 'Jackie Boy' Rafferty in Sin City. In Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, a complex dissection of the North American drug wars - as Javier Rodriguez — a Mexican border cop struggling to remain honest amid the corruption and deception of illegal drug trafficking — del Toro, who spoke most of his lines in Spanish, gave a performance that dominated the film and earned him his first Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.



Marcia Gay Harden is an Academy Award-winning American actress.For her film work, she won a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for Pollock (2000), and was nominated in the same category for Mystic River (2003). She is currently shooting a film called Home, in which she will be playing the role of a mother (to her real daughter, Eulala Scheel) as she did in Felicity: An American Girl Adventure (2005). Other notable films include The Imagemaker (1986), her first screen role, in which she played a stage manager; the Coen Brothers' Miller's Crossing (1990), a 1930s mobster drama in which she gained her first wide exposure; the Disney sci-fi comedy Flubber (1997), a popular hit in which she co-starred with Robin Williams; the supernatural drama Meet Joe Black (1998); Labor of Love (1998), a Lifetime Television movie in which she starred with David Marshall Grant; and an all-star adventure-drama of aging astronauts, Space Cowboys (2000). Harden is married to Thaddaeus Scheel, with whom she worked on The Spitfire Grill (1996), and the couple have three children: a daughter, Eulala Grace Scheel, and twins Julitta Dee Scheel and Hudson Harden Scheel.



Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is an Academy Award winning Chinese-language film in the wuxia (chivalric and martial arts) style, released in 2000. A China-Hong Kong-Taiwan-United States co-production, the film was directed by Ang Lee and featured an international cast of ethnic Chinese actors, including Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi and Chang Chen. The movie was based on the fourth novel in a pentalogy, known in China as the Crane-Iron Pentalogy, by Wang Dulu. The martial arts and action sequences were choreographed by Yuen Wo Ping. Made on a mere US$15 million budget, with dialogue in Mandarin, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon became a surprise international success. It grossed US$128 million in the United States alone, becoming the highest-grossing foreign-language film in American history. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and three other Academy Awards, and was nominated for six other Oscars, including Best Picture.



"Things Have Changed" is a song from the film Wonder Boys, written and performed by Bob Dylan. The song won the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. Director of Wonder Boys Curtis Hanson also created a music video for "Things Have Changed," filming new footage of Bob Dylan on the film's various locations and editing it with footage used in Wonder Boys as if Dylan were actually in the film.

72nd Academy Awards

The 72nd Academy Awards ceremony (also known as Oscars 2000) took place at Los Angeles' Shrine Auditorium, and was Billy Crystal's seventh time hosting the Awards. The ceremony attracted 46.53 million viewers, an audience 3.7% bigger the previous ceremony. The Academy Award ceremony was dominated by the movie American Beauty, which was nominated in 8 categories, and won 5 awards (including Best Director, Best Actor and Best Picture). This was the first to receive a noteworthy certification TV-14 partially due to the showing of many American Beauty clips featuring scenes of sex, innuendo, and violence. Also the Oscar nominated song "Blame Canada" (from South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut) was performed though it had offensive material (performer Robin Williams cleverly "hid" the single word). The first Oscar show to have a TV rating was 1997 but was rated TV-PG. This was also one of the longest Oscar productions on record clocking in at just over four hours. Twenty-two cameras covered the event for ABC Television, including six jib arms, two steadicams, one akela crane, and for the first time a rail-cam. There were nearly 200 microphones and over 600 moving light fixtures. The show had nine days of rehearsals. This was the first time a woman held the title of producer on an Oscar telecast. Producer Laura Ziskin would helm the show in 2002 and 2007.


American Beauty is a 1999 comedy/drama film that explores themes of romantic and paternal love, freedom, sexuality, beauty, self-liberation, existentialism, the search for happiness, and family against the backdrop of modern American suburbia. It was the feature film debuts for writer Alan Ball and director Sam Mendes, and starred Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening; all four were nominated for Oscars, and the film won five in total including Best Picture.


Sam Mendes won as Best Director. As a film director, he is best known for his debut film, American Beauty, for which he won an Academy Award for Directing. His other movies as Director include Road to Perdition and Jarhead. After a string of romances with actresses, including Cameron Diaz, Calista Flockhart, Jane Horrocks, and Rachel Weisz, Mendes married English actress Kate Winslet on May 24, 2003 in Anguilla in the Caribbean. Their first child, Joe Alfie Winslet-Mendes, was born on December 22, 2004. Mendes also has a stepdaughter, Mia Honey Threapleton, from Winslet's first marriage to assistant director Jim Threapleton.


The male awards for acting went to Kevin Spacey as Best actor for American Beauty and Michael Caine as Best Supporting Actor for The Cider House Rules. The Best Actress Oscar went to Hilary Swank. Her Hollywood film career began with a small part in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) and then a major part in The Next Karate Kid (1994), where she played Julie Pierce, the first female protégé of the sensei Mr. Miyagi. She has become known for her two Academy Award-winning performances: first as Brandon Teena, a transgender man in the movie Boys Don't Cry, and a struggling waitress-turned-boxer, Maggie Fitzgerald, in Million Dollar Baby. In September 1997, Swank was cast as single mother Carly Reynolds on Beverly Hills, 90210. She was initially promised it would be a two-year role, but saw her character written out after 16 episodes in January 1998. As it turned out, the firing was the best thing to happen to Swank, as it freed her to audition for the role of Brandon Teena in Boys Don't Cry. Swank dropped her body fat down to seven percent in preparation for the role. Many critics hailed hers as the best female performance of 1999; her co-star of the film, Chloë Sevigny, had her performance singled out for praise also, Swank and Sevigny were often ranked as the best two leads of 1999 in film. The performance ultimately won her the Golden Globe and Oscar for Best Actress. She subsequently won the Best Actress Oscar and Golden Globe again for playing a boxer in 2004's Million Dollar Baby, a role for which she underwent training and gained 19 pounds of muscle. Swank's Oscar success meant that she had joined the ranks of Vivien Leigh, Helen Hayes, Sally Field, and Luise Rainer as the only actresses to have been nominated twice and win both times (both times she won over fellow actress and nominee Annette Bening). She is also the third-youngest double Best Actress Oscar winner (after Luise Rainer and Jodie Foster.)Swank married actor Chad Lowe on September 28, 1997. The two met in 1992, on the set of Quiet Days in Hollywood, a direct-to-video film. Swank infamously forgot to thank Lowe during her acceptance speech after winning her first Oscar in 2000, and she spent nearly every public appearance afterward making up for it. Upon winning her second Oscar in 2005, Lowe was the first person she thanked. However, in January 2006, the couple separated.


Angelina Jolie is an American film actress and a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency. She is often cited by popular media as one of the world's most beautiful women and her off-screen life is widely reported. She has received three Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and an Academy Award. Though she made her screen debut as a child alongside her father Jon Voight in the 1982 film Lookin' to Get Out, Jolie's acting career began in earnest a decade later with the low budget production Cyborg 2 (1993). Her first leading role in a major film was in Hackers (1995). She starred in the critically acclaimed biographical films George Wallace (1997) and Gia (1998), and won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the drama Girl, Interrupted (1999). Jolie achieved international fame as a result of her portrayal of videogame heroine Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), and since then has established herself as one of the best-known and highest-paid actresses in Hollywood. She had her biggest commercial success with the action-comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005). Divorced from actors Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton, Jolie currently lives with actor Brad Pitt, in a relationship that has attracted worldwide media attention. Jolie and Pitt have three adopted children, Maddox, Pax, and Zahara, as well as a biological daughter, Shiloh. Jolie has promoted humanitarian causes throughout the world, and is noted for her work with refugees through UNHCR.


All About My Mother (Spanish: Todo sobre mi madre) is an award-winning 1999 film written and directed by the Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar. The film deals with complex issues such as AIDS, transvestitism, sexual identity, gender, religion, faith, and existentialism, but always with his classical tragicomedy touch, the film presents these serious issues with an edge of dark humour. All About My Mother was widely regarded as Almodóvar's finest and most mature film to date. It won the 1999 Academy Award for Best Foreign-language Film and seven Goya Awards including Best Film, Best Director and Best Actress in a Leading Role for Argentinean actress Cecilia Roth.


"You'll Be in My Heart" was the main single from the 1999 Disney animated feature Tarzan. Written and performed by Phil Collins, it appears on Tarzan: An Original Walt Disney Records Soundtrack as well as various other Disney compilations. A version of the single performed by Glenn Close also appears on the soundtrack."You'll Be in My Heart", eventually peaking at #21, was Collins's first appearance to the American Top 40 charts since 1994's "Everyday". The track went on to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song and the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Collins performed the song live at that year's ceremony.

71st Academy Awards

The 71st Academy Awards ceremony was the last to take place at Los Angeles County Music Center, held on March 21st 1999, and was Whoopi Goldberg's third time hosting the Awards. It was the first time the ceremony took place on a Sunday. The ceremony ran extremely long, due largely to extended acceptance speeches. Notable films included Shakespeare in Love, which received 13 nominations and won 7 awards, Saving Private Ryan, which received 11 nominations and won 5 awards, and Life Is Beautiful, which received 7 nominations and won 3 (including Best Actor and Best Foreign Language Film). The 71st Academy Awards saw the show's first "official" pre-show, as the Academy attempted to compete with the likes of E!'s Joan Rivers and other red carpet denizens. The show attracted 45.61m viewers, a 18% decline to the previous years 57.25 million, yet a high rating compared to most other ceremonies. This was the first time that two people have been nominated for Academy Awards for playing the same person in different films - Queen Elizabeth I - played by Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth and Judi Dench in Shakespeare in Love. This would mark the final time the show would originate from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, a venue the Academy Awards called home for nearly thirty-years.


Shakespeare in Love is an award-winning 1998 romantic comedy film. The film was directed by John Madden and co-written by playwright Tom Stoppard, whose first major success was with the Shakespeare-influenced play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. The film is largely fictional, although several of the characters are based on real people. In addition, some of the characters, lines, and plot devices are references to Shakespeare's plays. Shakespeare in Love won a number of Academy Awards in 1998, including Best Picture and Best Actress (for Gwyneth Paltrow). It was the first comedy to win the Best Picture award since Annie Hall (1977).


The Best Director award went to Steven Spielberg for Saving Private Ryan. The Best Actor award went to Roberto Benigni. Benigni's first film as director was Tu mi turbi (You upset me, 1983). On the set he met the Cesenate actress Nicoletta Braschi, who was to become his wife, and who has starred in most of the films he directed. In 1984, he played in Non ci resta che piangere ("Nothing left to do but cry") with the very popular comic actor Massimo Troisi. The story was a fable in which the protagonists are suddenly thrown back in time to the 15th century, just a little before 1492. They start looking for Columbus in order to stop him from discovering the Americas (although for very personal love reasons), but are not able to reach him. Beginning in 1986, Benigni starred in three films by American director Jim Jarmusch. Down By Law (1986) Night on Earth, (1991) and Coffee and Cigarettes (2003). In 1993, he starred in Son of the Pink Panther, directed by veteran Blake Edwards. There, he played Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau's illegitimate son who is assigned to save the Princess of Lugash. A serious role was in Federico Fellini's last film, La voce della luna (1989). In earlier years Benigni had started a long-lasting collaboration with screenwriter Vincenzo Cerami, for a series of films which scored great success in Italy: Il piccolo diavolo ("The little devil", with Walter Matthau), Johnny Stecchino ("Johnny Toothpick"), and Il Mostro ("The Monster"). Benigni is probably best known outside Italy for his 1997 tragicomedy Life Is Beautiful (La vita è bella), filmed in Cortona and Arezzo, also written by Cerami. The film is about an Italian Jewish man who tries to protect his son's innocence during his internment at a Nazi concentration camp, by telling him that the Holocaust is an elaborate game and he must adhere very carefully to the rules to win. Benigni's father had spent two years in a concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen, and La Vita è bella is based in part on his father's experiences. In 1998, the film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and Benigni personally won the Best Actor. The Best Foreign Language Film is awarded to the film itself, but Academy rules stipulate that the director will accept the award. The score by Nicola Piovani also won an Oscar. Famously, in the midst of being so giddy with delight, he climbed on the back of the seat for his procession to the stage and applauded the audience after he was told he had won one of his Oscars. The next year's ceremony, when he read the nominees for the Academy Award for Best Actress, host Billy Crystal playfully appeared behind him with a large net to restrain Benigni if he got excessive with his antics again. Benigni played one of the main characters in Asterix and Obelix vs Caesar as Detritus, a corrupted Roman tax collector who wants to kill the Caesar and claim the throne of the Roman Empire.


Gwyneth Paltrow is an Academy Award-winning American actress. Paltrow starred in Se7en (1995), opposite Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. The film was hugely successful commercially and critically. Then in 1996 she starred in Emma, where she received strongly positive critical acclaim, particularly in the UK for her impressive English accent, as well as in Europe and Asia. Two years later, Paltrow starred in Shakespeare in Love, a fantasy of how William Shakespeare might have written Romeo and Juliet. The film received critical acclaim, earned more than US$100 million in domestic box office receipts, and received numerous awards. Shakespeare in Love won the Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture-Musical or Comedy and Best Screenplay, as well as the Academy Award for Best Picture. Paltrow also won the award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role from the Screen Actors Guild. Later that year, Paltrow won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role. After her Oscar win Paltrow starred in other movie roles such as A Perfect Murder. In 2000 Paltrow starred in The Talented Mr. Ripley which earned over $80 million domestically, and received positive reviews. She then starred in Bounce with Shakespeare in Love costar Ben Affleck, which was moderately successful, both critically and commercially. Since then, she has had a relatively low-profile, yet steady, film career with a few critically acclaimed film roles, including Proof (2005) and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). On December 5, 2003, she married Chris Martin of the British rock group Coldplay in a secret wedding ceremony in Southern California. Paltrow gave birth to their first child, Apple Blythe Alison Martin, five months later, on May 14, 2004, in London. Her second child, Moses Bruce Anthony Martin, was born on April 8, 2006 in New York City's Mount Sinai Hospital.


James Coburn was an Oscar-winning American actor. Coburn became famous in the 1960s and 1970s as the "tough guy" in a variety of films, first mostly with his friends Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn and Charles Bronson (with whom he co-starred in The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape). A villainous part in the hugely successful Charade (1963) and a character role as a one-armed Indian tracker in Major Dundee (1965) gained him much notice. In 1966, he finally became a bona-fide star with the release of Our Man Flint, a James Bond spoof released by 20th Century Fox as competition. In 1973 he teamed up with radical director Sam Peckinpah for the film Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (they had first worked together in 1965 on Major Dundee). But an MGM producer tried to sabotage the production causing the film to be drastically edited when it opened. Both Peckinpah and Coburn were disappointed and delved into Cross of Iron, a critically-acclaimed war epic which performed poorly in the US but was a huge hit in Europe. He then appeared in films such as Young Guns II (1990), Sister Act 2 (1993), Maverick (1994), The Nutty Professor (1996), and Payback (1999), mostly in small but memorable roles. For appearing as the abusive father of protagonist Nick Nolte in Affliction, he received an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1998. He died suddenly on November 18, 2002 at the age of 74, of cardiac arrest, while listening to the radio. He was survived by his wife Paula Murad, a son, and a stepdaughter.


Judi Dench is an Academy Award-, Golden Globe-, Tony-, three-time BAFTA-, and six-time Laurence Olivier Award-winning English actress. In 1995 she became known to an international audience after taking over the role of 'M' (James Bond's boss) with the James Bond films, starting with GoldenEye. It could be argued that she helped reinvigorate the franchise with her fresh, sharp, and unexpected interpretation of the role. She has won multiple awards for performances on the London stage, including a record six Laurence Olivier Awards. She also won the American Tony award for her 1999 Broadway performance in the role of Esme Allen in David Hare's Amy's View. Alongside her numerous award winning performances, she has also managed to take on the role of Director for a number of stage productions. Dench won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as Elizabeth I in the film Shakespeare in Love. Judi Dench has frequently appeared with her close friend Geoffrey Palmer, in the series As Time Goes By and in the films Mrs. Brown and Tomorrow Never Dies, both filmed in 1997. Judi Dench has also lent her incredible voice to many animated characters, narrations, and various other voice work. Dench's more recent film career has been extremely successful. She successfully garnered six Oscar nominations in nine years for Mrs Brown in 1997; her Oscar-winning turn in Shakespeare in Love in 1998; for Chocolat in 2000; for the lead role of writer Iris Murdoch in Iris in 2001 (with Kate Winslet playing her as a younger woman); for Mrs Henderson Presents (a romanticised history of the Windmill Theatre) in 2005; and for 2006's Notes on a Scandal, a film for which she received critical acclaim, including Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations. In 1971, Dench married British actor Michael Williams and they had their only child, Tara Cressida Williams (aka "Finty Williams"), on 24 September 1972, who has followed the family's theatrical tradition to become an accomplished actress in her own right.


Life Is Beautiful (Italian: La vita è bella) is a 1997 Italian language film which tells the story of a Jewish Italian, Guido Orefice (played by Roberto Benigni, who also directed and co-wrote the film), who must learn how to use his fertile imagination to help his son survive their internment in a Nazi concentration camp. The first half of the movie is a whimsical, romantic comedy and often slapstick. Guido (Roberto Benigni), a young Italian Jew, arrives in Arezzo where he sets up a bookstore. Guido is both funny and charismatic, especially when he romances Dora (Italian, but not Jewish), portrayed by Benigni's actual wife Nicoletta Braschi), whom he steals – at her engagement – from her rude and loud fiancé. Several years pass, in which Guido and Dora have a son, Joshua (written Giosuè in the Italian version. Portrayed by Giorgio Cantarini). In the film, Joshua is around five years old. However, both the beginning and ending of the film is narrated by an older Joshua. In the second half of the movie, Guido, Guido's uncle, and Joshua are taken to a concentration camp on Joshua's birthday. Dora demands to join her family and is permitted to do so. In an attempt to keep up Joshua's spirits, Guido convinces him that the camp is just a game – a game in which the first person to get 100 points wins a tank. He tells Joshua that if you complain for hunger you lose points, while quiet boys who hide from the camp guards earn points. He convinces Joshua that the camp guards are mean because they want the tank for themselves and that all the other children are hiding in order to win the game. He puts off every attempt of Joshua ending the game and returning home by convincing him that they are in the lead for the tank. Despite being surrounded by rampant death and people and all their sicknesses, Joshua doesn't question this fiction both because of his father's convincing performance and his own innocence. Guido maintains this story right until the end, when – in the chaos caused by the American advance drawing near – he tells his son to stay in a sweatbox until everybody has left, this being the final test before the tank is his. After trying to find Dora, Guido is caught, taken away, and is shot by a Nazi guard, but not before making his son laugh one last time. Joshua manages to survive, and thinks he has won the game when an American tank arrives to liberate the camp, and he is reunited with his mother.The movie made the Cannes Film Festival in 1998, winning the Grand Prize of the Jury. It then went on to win Academy Awards for Best Music, Original Dramatic Score and Best Foreign Language Film. Benigni won Best Actor in both the foreign film category and overall for his role. The film was additionally nominated for Academy Awards for Directing, Film Editing, Best Picture, and Best Original Screenplay.


"When You Believe" is an Academy Award-winning song composed by Stephen Schwartz for the DreamWork's animated feature The Prince of Egypt, and produced as a single with additional music by writer-producer Babyface. It was the main theme of the film and was released as a single by American divas Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey as the soundtrack's first single in 1998"When You Believe" won the 1999 Academy Award for "Best Original Song" and was nominated for a Golden Globes for "Best Original Song".