'Birdman' wins four Oscars, including best picture

Brian Truitt | USA TODAY

Alejandro G. Iñárritu was clad in Oscar night's oddest but most successful lucky charm.

The Birdman director joked that he was wearing his star Michael Keaton's "tighty-whities" from the film, yet it was all good because his dark comedy took flight at the 87th Academy Awards on Sunday, winning four awards including best picture.

"It's great to be here, who am I kidding?" Keaton said as he joined the director on the stage. "This has been a tremendous experience. This guy is as bold as bold can be."

He was paying homage to Iñárritu, who took original screenplay and best director honors. Birdman also won best cinematography.

Iñárritu thanked everyone behind the film, which focused on a washed-up superhero-movie actor trying to get his groove back. It was a "crazy idea" for a script to start "with a middle-aged man in an interior dressing room cross-legged and floating," he said. But, "we are here. I don't know how that happened, but it happened."

Eddie Redmayne's role as the physicist Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything won him the best actor trophy, and the excited British actor dedicated his Oscar to the entire Hawking family. "I will be its (the statuette's) custodian and I promise you I will look after him. I will polish him, I will answer his beck and call, I will wait on him hand and foot."

And to his new wife, he added, "we have a new fella coming to share our apartment."

Julianne Moore took home best actress for Still Alice, in which she plays a woman with early-onset Alzheimer's. "I read an article that winning an Oscar could lead to living five years longer," she said. "If that's true, I'd really like to thank the academy because my husband is younger than me."



The Grand Budapest Hotel tied with Birdman by also winning four trophies: costume design, production design, makeup/hairstyling and original score.

"Wes, you're a genius. It is good. You offered me a great view from the Grand Budapest," composer Alexandre Desplat said of director Wes Anderson.

Stars used the Oscar stage not only as a place to accept awards but also to take a stand.

Glory, a call-to-arms anthem by Common and John Legend written for the civil-rights drama Selma, won for best original song. When accepting the Oscar, Legend said it's a musical symbol to the continued racial struggles in America. "When people are marching with our song, we want to tell you we are with you, we see you, we love you and march on."

Common recalled a time where he and Legend sang Glory on the same Alabama bridge where Martin Luther King Jr. marched 50 years ago. "This bridge was once a landmark of a divided nation but now is a symbol for change. The spirit of this bridge transcends race, gender, religion, sexual orientation and social status.''



Boyhood star Patricia Arquette, whose portrayal of a struggling single mom garnered her the trophy for supporting actress, gave her thanks and then spoke out for gender equality.

Patricia Arquette's bestie designed her Oscars dress Patricia Arquette of 'Boyhood' took home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Afterwards, she spoke about one of her own childhood friends who actually designed the dress she was wearing.

"To every woman who gave birth to every taxpayer and every citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else's equal rights. It's our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America."

Others spoke of family bonds. He might have freaked out a young drummer on screen in Whiplash, but J.K. Simmons didn't scare off voters — they awarded him best supporting actor for his acclaimed portrayal of a brutal jazz teacher.

J.K. Simmons reveals his secret to a happy career J.K. Simmons speaks after winning his first ever Oscar. He received Best Supporting Actor for the movie 'Whiplash.'

When Simmons accepted his Oscar — the first in the character actor's career — he was all about his family, thanking his parents as well as his wife and "above-average" kids. "You are extraordinary human beings, smart, funny, kind, loving people, and that's because you are a reflection of your mother."

The movie also picked up the awards for sound mixing as well as film editing for Tom Cross, who thanked Whiplash writer/director Damien Chazelle "for never throwing a chair at my head."

Adapted screenplay went to Graham Moore for The Imitation Game, and Moore spoke about tolerance and individuality while honoring the movie's subject, Alan Turing.

The gay British codebreaker in World War II "never got to stand on a stage like this and look out at all of these disconcertingly attractive faces, and I do and that's the most unfair thing I think I've ever heard," said an impassioned Moore.

"When I was 16 years old, I tried to kill myself because I felt weird and I felt different and I felt like I didn't belong, and now I'm standing here," he added. "So I would like for this moment to be for the kid out there who feels like she's weird or different or doesn't fit in anywhere. Yes, you do. Stay weird, stay different and when it's your turn and you're standing on this stage, please pass the same message to the next person."

Disney had a one-two punch in the animated categories, with the Boston terrier-starring Feast winning for short film and the superhero flick Big Hero 6 winning for feature film.

"Once upon a time there was a freckled-faced little boy who told his mom and his dad that one day he was going to work at Walt Disney Animation, and they did something amazing: They supported him and believed in him," said Big Hero 6 co-director Don Hall. "And from the bottom of his heart, he thanks them."

The box-office behemoth American Sniper won for sound editing and Interstellar took home the Oscar for visual effects.

The Oscar for documentary feature went to CitizenFour, which centered on Edward Snowden's whistleblower role in an NSA spying scandal. "The disclosures that Edward Snowden reveals don't only expose a threat to our privacy but to our democracy itself," said producer Laura Poitras. "When the most important decisions being made affecting all of us are made in secret, we lose our ability to check the powers that control."

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Poland garnered its first win for best foreign language film with director Pawel Pawlikowski's Ida.

"We made a film about the need for silence and withdrawal from the world and contemplation, and here we are, at the epicenter for noise and world attention," Pawlikowski said. "Life is full of surprises."

The Phone Call snagged the Oscar for best live-action short — "Crikey! These are big buggers," said co-director Mat Kirkby when accepting his award — and Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1 won for documentary short subject.