Copyright (2007) AAP

Mark Coultan

Herald Correspondent in Los Angeles and agencies

February 27, 2007

On screen, they were the tyrant and the Queen. Yesterday, they were simply the King and Queen. The King and Queen of Hollywood - both for performances in British-made films.

Britain's Helen Mirren was named best actress at the Academy Awards for her spot-on portrayal of the ruling Queen Elizabeth in The Queen, a tale about the royal family in a time of crisis at the death of Princess Diana. Forest Whitaker won best actor playing the ruthless Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Queen," Mirren told the Academy Award ceremony yesterday, holding her Oscar high. "My sister told me, 'All kids love to get gold stars,' and this is the biggest and best gold star I've ever had in my life."

Whitaker, an American who played a British soldier in the The Crying Game, had to take a moment to calm himself. Then, with his voice breaking, he remembered a time when he was a child watching movies in the back seat of his family's car at the local drive-in cinema. He said that for children who believe in dreams, he was proof they can come true.

Australia's George Miller was a kid who believed in dreams. With a lucky coin and a penguin in his tuxedo pocket for good fortune, the prolific Australian filmmaker broke his Oscar hoodoo with the animated blockbuster, Happy Feet. He went close with a pig, but his bunch of dancing penguins won Miller his first Oscar. The director of Babe, Mad Max, Lorenzo's Oil and The Witches of Eastwick said he never thought he would win an Oscar for an animated feature. Happy Feet was the only Australian winner at the awards.

A few weeks earlier, Miller, 61, confessed he would be content to go to his grave without winning an Oscar. "Oh gosh," he said as he walked on stage to collect his Oscar. "I asked my kids what should I say. They said 'Thank all the men for wearing penguin suits'."

The awards were otherwise dominated by royalty. Not just Mirren and Whitaker, but film royalty in the shape of Martin Scorsese, who finally won the Oscar he has deserved for more than 30 years. Scorsese's homage to the gangster genre, The Departed, won four awards, including best picture and best director. Scorsese said exactly the same thing he has said when he missed out on Oscars for Raging Bull, Taxi Driver and The Aviator: "Winning for me is making the pictures and having people seeing them."

It was one of the most popular choices for many years. Scorsese had missed out six times. He said he knew something was up when three friends, fellow directors Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg, walked out to present the best director award, and Spielberg smiled at him.

Scorsese accepted the award by saying "thank you" 12 times and then joked: "Could you double-check the envelope, please?"

But it was no mistake. He said his lack of an Oscar had become a matter of public discussion. "So many people over the years have been wishing this for me. Strangers. You know, I went walking in the street, people say something to me. I go in a doctor's office, I go in a whatever. Elevators, people saying, 'You should win one, you should win one.' "

It was an Oscars where almost all the favourites won. Best documentary went to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. He joked about speculation he would use the occasion to announce a run for president. "My fellow Americans," he began, before a well-timed orchestra drowned him out.

He said the subject of the film, climate change, was not a political issue, but a moral one. "We have everything we need to get started, with the possible exception of the will to act, and that's a renewable resource. Let's renew it."

It was the sort of Oscars that makes America's right wing think that Hollywood is irredeemable. Not only were the awards hosted by the gay comedienne Ellen DeGeneres, not only did An Inconvenient Truth win two Oscars, but Melissa Etheridge, a surprise winner in the best song category (beating three entries from the movie Dreamgirls) thanked her wife, and later remarked that the Oscar statue was the only naked man that was ever going to be in her bedroom.

"I have to thank Al Gore for inspiring us, inspiring me and showing that caring about the earth is not Republican or Democrat. It's not red or blue. We are all green," Etheridge said. Gore said later: "The Academy has gone green this year."

The newcomer Jennifer Hudson won best supporting actress for her role as spurned singer Effie White in musical Dreamgirls, and veteran Alan Arkin, 72, won the Oscar for best supporting actor in Little Miss Sunshine, which also took best original screenplay for writer Michael Arndt.

Whitaker thanked God, his ancestors and the people of Uganda for his award.

Mirren, the hot favourite for best actress, thanked the woman she portrayed. Calling her "Elizabeth Windsor", she said she had "maintained her dignity, her sense of duty, and her hairstyle".

"She's had her feet planted firmly on the ground, her hat on her head, her handbag on her arm and she's weathered many, many storms, and I salute her courage and her consistency."