It's a Knight to remember

Published on Monday 25 February 2008 09:30

DANIEL DAY-LEWIS and Tilda Swinton swept Britain to Oscar glory while No Country For Old Men was the biggest film of this year's ceremony.

Day-Lewis, 50, as predicted, won his second best actor Academy Award for his towering performance as a ruthless, malevolent oilman in There Will Be Blood.

Swinton, 47, landed the best supporting actress gong for her role as a ruthless corporate lawyer in the George Clooney movie Michael Clayton.

The 80th Academy Awards named France's Marion Cotillard as best actress for her role as singer Edith Piaf in the biopic La Vie en Rose.

The 32-year-old beat Julie Christie to the title just weeks after her surprise victory over the British veteran at the Baftas.

The film that dominated the night at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre was No Country For Old Men, the Coen brothers' violent neo-western.

It won four of its eight nominations, beating British film Atonement to best picture, and scooping best director.

It also took the prize for best supporting actor for Spanish actor Javier Bardem, and adapted screenplay.

London-born Swinton provided one of the most amusing speeches of the ceremony when she thanked her agent, but not in the usual fashion, saying as she held up her statuette: "I have an American agent who is the spitting image of this.

"Really, truly, the same shaped head and, it has to be said, the buttocks."

Day-Lewis, who holds joint Irish and British citizenship, and received his first Oscar for My Left Foot in 1990, picked up his second Academy Award from Helen Mirren, recipient of last year's best actress gong. "That's the closest I'll ever come to getting a knighthood, so thank you," he joked.

Perhaps drawing inspiration from his violent character Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood, he thanked "the members of the academy for whacking me with the handsomest bludgeon in town."

No Country For Old Men, starring Tommy Lee Jones and about a drug deal that goes wrong and its bloody aftermath, has been described as one of the best films in the Coen brothers' career.

Their films over the years have included Fargo, Blood Simple and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, but this was their first best picture and directing gong.

Unusually, the academy snubbed US stars in all the acting categories – awarding them to two Britons, a French actress and a Spanish actor.

Austrian film The Counterfeiters, a true story about the Nazi's counterfeiting operation, won the foreign language film category.

Peter And The Wolf, an adaptation of Prokofiev's classic directed by Briton Suzie Templeton, won best animated short film.

She thanked everyone who "worked so hard to make our dream come true" while British producer Hugh Welchman, who was clutching a small model of Peter, exclaimed: "This is a fairytale ending for us."

Edinburgh-based cinematographer Seamus McGarvey was among those going home empty-handed from the awards.

The 40-year-old Irishman had been nominated in the Best Cinematography category for his work on Atonement.