Cate Blanchett wins best actress Oscar

Australian Cate Blanchett won the best actress Oscar on Sunday for her role as a socialite who suffers a breakdown in Woody Allen's "Blue Jasmine."

The win is Blanchett's second Academy Award. The 44-year-old was favored to win this year's prize after picking up Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and BAFTA awards earlier this year.

'12 Years a Slave' wins best picture Oscar

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.

Alfonso Cuaron wins best director Oscar for 'Gravity'

Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron won the Oscar for best director on Sundayfor the space thriller, "Gravity," in which an astronaut fights for her survival after being cut loose from her space shuttle.

It was the first Academy Award for Cuaron, 52, and the first best director Oscar for a Mexican. His 3-D film starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney mixes dazzling special effects, suspense and human drama.

Accepting the Oscar, Cuaron paid special tribute to Bullock: "Sandy, you are 'Gravity', you are the soul and heart of the film. You are an amazing collaborator and one of the best people I have ever met."

Cuaron had been hotly tipped to win the best director category, having swept the prize in other awards ceremonies before Sunday's Oscars, including from the Directors Guild of America.

Cuaron, who as a child wanted to be an astronaut, spent three years with a team developing the film's special effects and on-screen space panoramas, which many critics said broke new ground in the use of 3-D cinematic technology.

Referring to the "transformative" experience he and others undertook in the four-plus years spent making "Gravity," Cuaron, whose hair is graying, said, "For a lot of these people, that transformation was wisdom. For me, it was just the color of my hair."

McConaughey wins best actor Oscar for 'Dallas Buyers Club'

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."

In recent years, McConaughey has sought more serious roles, winning critical acclaim for movies including "The Lincoln Lawyer" and "Mud," and the HBO TV series "True Detective."

As Woodroof, the actor brought to life a man who evolved from detestable bigot to a lifeline for fellow AIDS patients, many of them gay or transgender. At the same time, he fought for his own life at a time when doctors were scrambling to find effective treatments for the fatal disease.

McConaughey's passion for the role helped bring "Dallas Buyers Club" to the big screen after 20 years of setbacks, when other actors dropped out and major Hollywood studios rejected it.

The actor, himself a Texan, helped bring together financing and embarked on his extreme weight loss to force the movie into production. His role has brought him more than a dozen awards, including a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award.

The film was made for about $5 million, a tiny sum by Hollywood standards, and filmed in 25 days.

McConaughey beat rival Oscar nominees Bruce Dern for "Nebraska," Leonardo DiCaprio for "The Wolf of Wall Street," Chiwetel Ejiofor for "12 Years a Slave," and Christian Bale for "American Hustle."