The slavery drama "12 Years a Slave" won the best picture Oscar on Sunday, becoming the first film from a black director to win the film industry's top honor in the 86 years of the Academy Awards.
The film from British director Steve McQueen is based on the memoirs of a free black man, Solomon Northup, who is tricked and sold into bondage in Louisiana in an unflinching account of pre-Civil War slavery in America.
Matthew McConaughey won the Oscar for best actor on Sunday for his role in "Dallas Buyers Club" as a homophobic, rodeo-loving Texan who contracts AIDS and becomes an unlikely savior for gay patients and drug addicts desperate for treatment.
McConaughey lost some 50 pounds (23 kg) for the role, looking gaunt as real-life crusader Ron Woodroof, a cowboy who fought the U.S. government during the early AIDS epidemic of the 1980s to provide patients with medicines he imported from foreign countries.
"First off, I want to thank God, because that's who I look up to," the actor said accepting the award. "He's graced my life with opportunities that I know are not of my hand or any other human hand. He has shown me that it's a scientific fact that gratitude reciprocates."
The win is the first Academy Award for McConaughey, 44, once known primarily as the handsome leading man in romantic comedies such as "The Wedding Planner" and "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days."
"Whatever it is we look up to, whatever it is we look forward to and whoever it is we're chasing, to that I say, 'Amen,' to that I say, 'Alright, alright, alright,' McConaughey said adding his trademark exclamation that drew laughter from the audience, "to that I say just keep living."
Australian Cate Blanchett won her second Oscar on Sunday for her role as a socialite who suffers a breakdown in Woody Allen's "Blue Jasmine."
Blanchett, 44, was the favorite to win this year's Oscar after sweeping awards season with prizes including the Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and BAFTA earlier this year.
Blanchett beat Amy Adams, Sandra Bullock, Judi Dench and Meryl Streep for the Oscar.
"As random and subjective as this award is, it means a great deal in a year of, yet again, extraordinary performances by women," Blanchett said in her acceptance speech.
(Reuters)
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