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Jennifer Connelly wins best supporting actress
"A Beautiful Mind" got off to a lovely start at the 74th annual Academy Awards on Sunday as Jennifer Connelly was named best supporting actress in the first award in what could be a night of Oscar surprises . Connelly won for playing Alicia Nash, the long suffering wife of Nobel prize-winning mathematician and schizophrenic John Nash, played by Russell Crowe. The film is up for eight Oscars including best film, best director and best actor. "I believe in love, that there is nothing more important. Alicia Nash is a true champion of love," Connelly said as her fellow cast members and the film's director Ron Howard sat in the audience and beamed. The film had been the subject of a whispering campaign going into the Oscars with claims that its makers covered up Nash's alleged homosexuality and anti-Semitism. Nash denied both in an unusual pre-Oscar interview with "60 Minutes." Oscars host Whoopi Goldberg took almost immediate notice of the controversy. "So much mud has been thrown this year all the nominees were black," she said after descending to the stage in a trapeze much the way Nicole Kidman did in another Oscar-nominated film, "Moulin Rouge." Goldberg, wearing a 19th century French showgirl's outfit with an enormous plumage of feathers, said she had even received an e-mail suggesting Frodo Baggins, the hobbit hero of "Lord of the Rings^ Crowe looked cool and composed as he marched into the Kodak Theatre, the spanking new Hollywood home of the Oscars for which the photo film company payed a staggering $75 million for naming rights. "I am just looking forward to having a really nice night. I am going to sit back and enjoy the show," Crowe said. Asked if he had prepared a speech, he told an ABC television interviewer^Crowe, who won last year's best actor Oscar, was not the only star practicing Zen-like grace under pressure on Hollywood's tensest night. Denzel Washington, Crowe's main competitor, preferred to talk about his new career as a director but said he would continue acting as the pay can't be beat. MOURNING FOLLOWED BY SPARKLES After a season of mourning and modesty following the Sept. 11 suicide hijack attacks, many stars sparkled on the red carpet wearing an array of borrowed diamonds from head to toe. "Mulholland Drive" actress Laura Elena Harring outshone the pack sporting a $27 million dollar diamond necklace and a pair of Stuart Weitzman strappy platinum and diamond studded high heels valued at $1 million. Harring, who was briefly married to Count Carl von Bismarck, said she had three bodyguards escorting her to the show. While many actresses chose black, it was black with some sexy touches -- Julia Roberts and Sharon Stone wore blacks dresses slashed low in the back. Other stars like Kidman and Jennifer Lopez chose pink or salmon chiffon. The answer to the night's big non-award question was: Kidman brought her sister and not a date. Many Hollywood wags had wondered if she would show up with one to mark herself as an independent woman after her divorce from Tom Cruise. As for Cruise, he opened the Oscars with a short speech that asked a simple question: should Hollywood celebrate the Oscars in the wake of the Sept. 11 suicide hijack attacks. Cruise said Sept. 11 was an event that "would change us" and he asked, "Should we celebrate the joy and magic that movies bring" and then added, "Dare I say it^ This year's Awards mark the first time that the ceremony has been held in the heart of Hollywood in 42 years -- the last time being 1960 -- when John F. Kennedy was just a presidential candidate and Burt Lancaster won best actor for "Elmer Gantry," a tame film by the standards of 2002. With its red carpet parade of stars like Kidman and Crowe, this year's Oscars hope to mark a full return to the pomp and circumstance normal for Hollywood after an awards season in which much flash and dash was toned down out of respect for the victims of Sept. 11. Hints of Sept. 11 were not hard to find ;- an armored car could be seen on the street where the awards were taking place and a small army of security men manned metal detectors and searched for anything untoward. Air traffic was banned over Hollywood and concrete barriers lined the entryway to the Kodak Theatre. Police bomb squads and hazardous materials teams were also on hand to respond to any threats, officials said. CLOSED STREETS BUT WIDE OPEN RACES The competition in most Oscar categories, including the top honor for best picture, was seen as especially close this year. "A Beautiful Mind" was seen as a narrow favorite despite a negative campaign by rivals and a controversy over whether the film ducked the darker side of John Nash's life. Other best movie nominees include "Gosford Park," an upstairs-downstairs murder mystery by legendary director Robert Altman, epic fantasy "The Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring," musical spectacular "Moulin Rouge" and dark horse contender "In the Bedroom," a story of a couple torn apart by grief and a desire for revenge. "Lord of the Rings" has been the big box office winner of the group, raking in about $300 million in North America, against some $155 million for "A Beautiful Mind." While the Oscars are picked by fewer than 6,000 Academy members, the fans and critics at large are also split this year on best picture and other key categories. A poll by ABC News and Gallup released on Friday showed both "Rings" and "Mind" each receiving backing of just over a quarter of those surveyed, with the other nominated films trailing far behind.
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