Feature | Lights, Camera, Action! Special – Oscars 2015 Winners

The race for Best Picture and Best Director had, essentially, been narrowed down to two movies - Richard Linklater's family drama Boyhood and Alejandro Inarritu's black comedy Birdman. Boyhood had triumphed at the BAFTAs, but Sunday night belonged to Birdman, which won both those awards and two more for good measure, Cinematography and Original Screenplay. Boyhood, on the other hand, had to settle for just one trophy - Best Supporting Actress, which went to Patricia Arquette.

She was the front runner in her category as were the winners of two other acting awards. Julianne Moore took Best Actress for Still Alice, where she plays a professor who develops early onset Alzheimer's, and J. K. Simmons added to his massive collection of trophies from this season by winning Best Supporting Actor. The Brits had cause to cheer when it came to Best Actor. Again, this was seen as a two horse race, between Birdman's Michael Keaton and Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything. In the end, it was Redmayne who triumphed, making sure that all the attention surrounding British performers in Hollywood translated into at least one trophy. The Imitation Game did slightly better than at the BAFTAs, winning the Adapted Screenplay category.

As far as numbers were concerned, Birdman and The Grand Budapest Hotel had both received the highest number of nominations: they had nine apiece. They also had the most wins, with Wes Anderson's shaggy dog story winning four trophies for Hair/Make Up, Costume Design, Production Design and Original Soundtrack.

On an evening of few surprises, perhaps the biggest was the double whammy pulled off by Disney. Its short, Feast, had been widely expected to take Best Animated Short and it duly obliged, but it also won Best Animated Feature for Big Hero 6, an award that was expected to go to How to Train Your Dragon 2.