Slumdog Millionaire Sweeps Oscar Awards2009-02-23

An underdog movie about a little guy overcoming life's enormous obstacles swept the Oscars Sunday night, as Slumdog Millionaire racked up eight Academy Awards, including those for Best Picture and for its Director, Danny Boyle.

But it was not the underdog, The Wrestler star Mickey Rourke, whose career faded in the '90s, who was named Best Actor. That Oscar category was won by Sean Penn, for Milk, in which he played 1970s gay activist Harvey Milk.

"I did not expect this, and I know how hard I make it to appreciate me, often," Penn said in his impassioned acceptance speech – in which he also acknowledged his fellow nominee. "Mickey Rourke rises again," said Penn, "and he is my brother."

Besides Penn's Oscar, his second as Best Actor (his first was for 2003's Mystic River), Milk was also singled out for its Original Screenplay, by Dustin Lance Black.

A breathless Kate Winslet was named Best Actress for her role as a troubled woman with a Nazi past in The Reader. She confided to the audience in her acceptance speech that she first pretended to win an Oscar when she was 8 and looking in the bathroom mirror, holding a shampoo bottle.

Only, Sunday night on the stage of Hollywood's Kodak Theatre, she was holding a world-famous golden statuette. "Well," she said, "it's not a shampoo bottle now."

She also advised her sister "goddess" nominees just to accept the overwhelming fact that they were nominated in the same category as Meryl Streep.

Share