DiCaprio wins Best Actor at 2016 Oscars

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LOS ANGELES – On a night when host Chris Rock made fun of Hollywood’s lack of minority Oscar acting nominees, it was a long-suffering actor who got the most cheers. Leonardo DiCaprio, the six-time Academy Award nominee for Best Actor known for his good looks and his seeming inability to win the big one finally did, and the world was watching.

DiCaprio earned his Oscar for The Revenant, a survivial drama set in 1823 in what is now Montana and South Dakota, and earned Alejandro González Iñárritu his second straight Oscar for Best Director. Brie Larson won Best Actress for the drama Room, a film about a mother and son who are held captive in an enclosed space for seven years.

The investigative drama Spotlight earned Best Picture honors at these 88th Academy Awards. The film about The Boston Globe’s discovery and pursuit of abuses by Catholic priests in New England also won Best Original Screenplay for director Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer.

In the biggest upset of the night, Mark Rylance’s performance as suspected spy Rudolf Abel in Bridge of Spies earned him Best Supporting Actor honors over sentimental favorite Sylvester Stallone. Stallone was nominated for his sixth outing as Rocky Balboa in Creed. Alicia Vikander won Best Supporting Actress for The Danish Girl.

Despite being shut out of the major categories, George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road still took home an impressive six Oscars: Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Production Design, Best Sound Editing, and Best Sound Mixing.

Still, the night belonged to DiCaprio. Nearly 19 years after scoring one of the biggest blockbusters in history with Titanic, and after getting critical acclaim for roles in The Great Gatsby, Catch Me If You Can, Gangs of New York, Django Unchained, Inception, and The Aviator, speculation was high that this would finally earn him the Oscar. He beat out Bryan Cranston for Trumbo, Michael Fassbender for Steve Jobs, Matt Damon for The Martian, and last year’s winner, Eddie Redmayne, for The Danish Girl.

The other winners were:

Best Original Song: Spectre,”Writing’s on the Wall,” Jimmy Napes and Sam Smith

Best Original Score: The Hateful Eight, Ennio Morricone

Best Foreign Language Film: Son of Saul (Hungary),László Nemes

Best Live Action Short: Stutterer, Benjamin Cleary and Serena Armitage

Best Documentary Feature: Amy. Asif Kapadia and James Gay-Rees

Best Documentary Short: A Girl in a River: The Price of Forgiveness,Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

Best Animated Feature: Inside Out, Pete Docter and Jonas Rivera

Best Animated Short: Bear Story,Gabriel Osorio and Pato Escala

Best Visual Effects: Ex Machina, Andrew Whitehurst, Paul Norris, Mark Ardington and Sara Bennett

Best Cinematography: The Revenant,Emmanuel Lubezki

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Mad Max: Fury Road, Lesley Vanderwalt, Elka Wardega, and Damian Martin

Best Production Design: Mad Max: Fury Road,Colin Gibson, and Lisa Thompson

Best Costume Design: Mad Max: Fury Road, Jenny Beavan

Best Adapted Screenplay: The Big Short, Charles Randolph and Adam McKay

Best Original Screenplay: Spotlight, Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer

Image courtesy of Reuters