Instead of making an Oscar speech holding a shampoo bottle, best actress winner Kate Winslet (for The Reader) holds the real thing.
"I'm very lucky to have been given Hanna Schmitz by Bernhard Schlink and David Hare and Stephen [Daldry] and working with you is an experience I will never forget," Winslet said. "There was no division between the cast and the crew on this film, and that's what made it so special. … And I want to acknowledge my fellow nominees, these goddesses. I think we all can't believe we're in a category with Meryl Streep at all. I'm sorry, Meryl, but you have to just suck that up!"
Marion Cotillard, last year's winner for La Vie en Rose, presented the statuette to Winslet.
Before that, Cotillard and fellow best actress winners of years past Sophia Loren, Nicole Kidman, Halle Berry, and Shirley MacLaine, paid homage to this year's nominees. Loren's lengthy homage to Meryl Streep was the most interesting, if only because of Loren's curious hand-on-hip pose.
Strangely, the former winners were introduced as the orchestra played the theme music from, of all movie titles, Gone with the Wind.
Photo: Darren Decker / © AMPAS.