Actor/producer/director Ben Affleck accepts the Best Picture award for ?Argo? onstage during the Oscars held at the Dolby Theatre on February 24, 2013 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
(USA TODAY) -- Argo had one more Hollywood ending to pull off this awards season. Mission accomplished.
Director
Ben Affleck's political thriller lived up to its favorite status and
won three honors including best picture at the 85th Academy Awards.
"I
was here 15 years ago and I had no idea what I was doing," Affleck
says, referring to his screenplay win for Good Will Hunting. "I was a
kid. I never thought I would be back here and now I am because of so
many of you."
Daniel Day-Lewis won his record third best-actor statue Steven Spielberg's Lincoln.
RELATED: Complete list of winners at the 85th annual Academy Awards
"I
really don't know how any of this happened. I do know I've had good
fortune in my life," he said, who made reference of his knack for
completely becoming his characters.
"I do know my wife Rebecca (Miller) has lived with very strange men, and she's been the perfect companion to all of them."
After wowing critics and audiences for her Les Miserables role as the tragic Fantine - and her emotional belting of the showtune I Dreamed a Dream - Anne Hathaway picked up her first Academy Award, for best supporting actress.
"It
came true," she said with a whisper after receiving her Oscar. "Here's
hoping that sometime in the not-so-distant future the misfortunes of
Fantine will only be found in stories, and not in real life."
Best-actress nominee Jennifer Lawrence also became a first-time winner for Silver Linings Playbook - although she did have a spill on the way to the stage to receive her award.
"You
guys are just standing up because I fell and you feel sorry for me,"
joked Lawrence, who also made sure to wish her fellow nominee, Amour star Emmanuelle Riva, a happy 86th birthday.
Ang Lee followed up his best-director win for 2005's Brokeback Mountain with one for the visual extravaganza of Life of Pi.
"Thank you, movie god. I have to share this with all 3,000 who worked with me on Life of Pi," he said. "You're the golden statue in my heart."
The
movie won three other awards, including visual effects, cinematography
and original score. Composer Mychael Danna remarked that Lee directed
the movie in the same impressive spirit that "people came from around
the world to breathe life into this music."
Christoph Waltz won his second Academy Award for his role as bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained at Sunday night's ceremony. He won the same award for 2009's Inglourious Basterds, also directed by Tarantino, and an emotional Waltz profusely thanked his director.
"We
participated in a hero's journey, and the hero being Quentin," said
Waltz, winning in a field featuring five actors with 21 Oscar
nominations between them. "You scaled the mountain because you're not
afraid of it. You slay the dragon because you're not afraid of it."
In turn, Tarantino paid respect to his actors when the Django filmmaker picked up his second Oscar for best original screenplay. (His first was for Pulp Fiction.)
"I
have to cast the right people to make those characters come alive and
for them to last a long time," he said. "It's such an honor to get it
this year. This will be the writer's year."
Argo writer
Chris Terrio won his first-ever Oscar for best adapted screenplay, and
dedicated it to former CIA officer Tony Mendez - whose work to save six
Americans in revolutionary Iran was the basis for the political thriller
- and those around the world "who use creativity and intelligence to
solve problems non-violently."
In the race for best animated feature, Pixar's Brave -
about a young redheaded Scottish lass - conquered the field, and the
win marks the animation studio's seventh triumph in 12 years.
"I just happened to be wearing the kilt," Brave director Mark Andrews joked.
Amour,
which is also up for best picture, garnered the Academy Award for
foreign language film. The movie followed two octogenarian lovebirds,
and in his acceptance speech director Michael Haneke doled out his own
love to his wife ("You are the center of my life") and his two stars,
Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant ("Without them, I would not be up
here").
Adele's hit title tune from the James Bond film Skyfall
garnered the Oscar for best original song. The British singer and
recent Grammy winner tearily thanked everyone around the project "for
believing in me all the time."
Malik Bendjelloul and Simon Chinn's Searching for Sugar Man, about the obscure American singer Sixto Rodriguez, was the winner for best documentary feature.
Rodriguez
wasn't at the ceremony "because he didn't want to take any of the
credit himself," Chinn said. "That says everything about that man and
his story you'd ever want to know."
Anna Karenina's Jacqueline Durran picked up the Oscar for costume design, Les Miserables was honored for sound mixing as well as makeup and hairstyling, Lincoln locked up production design, and film editing went to Argo. There was also the sixth tie in Oscar history, this time in sound editing, between Zero Dark Thirty and Skyfall.
In the shorts categories, Shawn Christensen's Curfew won for live-action film, documentary went to Inocente by Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine, and Disney's Paperman, by John Kahrs, garnered the animation Oscar.
Brian Truitt, USA TODAY