Kathryn Bigelow has become the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar – beating her ex-husband James Cameron – as her low budget film The Hurt Locker beat his – the most expensive film of all time, Avatar – to the Best Picture honour.
The Hurt Locker – about an American bomb disposal squad in Baghdad in 2002 – picked up six Oscars from its nine nominations – including Editing, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing and Original Screenplay.
Avatar went away with just three prizes – for Art Direction, Visual Effects and Cinematography.
The next biggest winners of the night were Crazy Heart, Precious and Up.
Crazy Heart won Best Leading Actor, for Jeff Bridges, and Best Original Song for its theme, The Weary Kind, by Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett.
Precious won Best Supporting Actress, for Mo’Nique and Best Adapted Screenplay (Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire).
Up was the voted the Best Animated Feature as well as collected the Best Score prize.
Sandra Bullock fought off competition from Meryl Streep – as well as Brits Carey Mulligan and Dame Helen Mirren – to take the Best Leading Actress Oscar for The Blind Side.
The most well sign-posted award of the night was the first to be handed out – the Best Supporting Actor Oscar went to Christoph Waltz for playing the Jew Hunter in Inglourious Basterds – the film’s only win from eight nominations.
One of the few surprises of the night was in the Foreign Language competition. The Oscar went not to the Cannes winner, Germany’s The White Ribbon or France’s A Prophet, which won the BAFTA and the inaugural London Star award at the London Film Festival – but to Argentina’s The Secret In Their Eyes.
The Best Animated Short Film went to France’s Logorama, beating Britain’s Nick Park’s A Matter of Loaf and Death.
The Best Live Action Short was The New Tenants an American/Danish co-production.
The Cove was the Best Feature Documentary and Music By Prudence won the Best Documentary Short.
Star Trek won the Best Make-Up and the only British winner of the night was The Young Victoria, for costume.