Each January, the entertainment community and film fans around the world turn their attention to the Academy Awards. Interest and anticipation builds to a fevered pitch leading up to the Oscar telecast in February, when hundreds of millions of movie lovers tune in to watch the glamorous ceremony and learn who will receive the highest honours in filmmaking.
And the Oscar Goes to…
The Oscars reward the previous year’s greatest cinema achievements as determined by some of the world’s most accomplished motion picture artists and professionals. The Academy’s roughly 6,000 members vote for the Oscars using secret ballots, which are tabulated by the international auditing firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers. The auditors maintain absolute secrecy until the moment the show’s presenters open the envelopes and reveal the winners on live television.
Trivia
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Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman ever to win a Best Director Oscar for The Hurt Locker in 2010
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In 2010, the organizers of the Academy Awards announced that winners' acceptance speeches must not run past 45 seconds
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Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin hosted the 2010 Oscars
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2009 was the year of Slumdog Millionaire – and thus, the year of India
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In 2009, Heath Ledger posthumously won Best Supporting Actor for his performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight
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The first and only person with an Oscar for playing a character of the opposite sex, Linda Hunt won Supporting Actress for playing male photographer Billy Kwan in "The Year of Living Dangerously" (1983)