Five-Oscar Haul for NZ Film Industry
Staff Reporter

New Zealanders in the film industry showed the world they could foot it with the best after scooping five coveted Oscars at the 74th Academy Awards.

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring took out four Oscars from a massive 13 nominations in one of the most closely contested awards in years.

New Zealander Andrew Adamson shared the award for animation film Shrek.

As Rings director Peter Jackson looked on, wearing a special pin for luck on his jacket, the film took out best makeup, accepted by Richard Taylor and Peter Owen.

The second golden statuette was for best cinematography for Andrew Lesnie and the third, best visual effects for Mark Stetson, Taylor, Jim Rygiel and Randall William Cook.

In their acceptance speech, the team recognised the work of Wellington's Weta Workshop behind the special effects in the feature film.

The effects team were responsible for making more than 1000 suits of armour and 22,000 prosthetic hobbit feet for the first of the Rings trilogy of films, filmed in New Zealand.

The picture also received an Oscar for best musical score by Canadian composer Howard Shore.

After accepting his two awards, Taylor lauded Jackson's hard work.

"We have been on the most amazing journey together due in part to the vision of Peter Jackson ... Those who went through hours of makeup ... the wonderful genius of the small group of young New Zealanders that have gathered around us to make this so possible." Owen was stunned by his award.

"I just want to say I don't know why anyone gave me the job in the first place. I'm still recovering from that," he said.

"I got an opportunity to go to the most beautiful country on earth, in my opinion, work with a genuine fellowship of people and torture a lot of actors. I can't thank the Academy enough for this. It is delirium. Thank you."

Lesnie wanted to impress on the audience of around 3300 the greatness of this country and the people here.

"I had the privilege of working with a really sensational cast and terrific crews, predominantly New Zealanders ...and I just want to say Australia and New Zealand are terrific places to grow up and great to work in and great to live in."

Shore said how much he enjoyed the task of creating music to go with JRR Tolkien's epic Rings tale.

"It was just a tremendously rewarding performance to translate the words of Tolkien into music. And I feel blessed to be part of this production."

The fifth Kiwi Oscar was a shared award between the creators of the animation wonder Shrek, co-directed by New Zealander Andrew Adamson.

The award was the first ever Oscar for a full length animated feature. Shrek proved a massive box-office hit with its computer-animated tale of an ugly green ogre, voiced by Mike Myers, with a talking donkey, voiced by Eddie Murphy, as a sidekick.

While there was success for Rings in some categories, the big awards were out of reach. The best director nomination for Peter Jackson was taken out by A Beautiful Mind director Ron Howard.

Best picture also went to A Beautiful Mind but its star, New Zealand-born actor Russell Crowe, missed out on the prestigious best actor Oscar to Training Day's Denzel Washington.

In A Beautiful Mind, Crowe played schizophrenic mathematics genius John Nash who went on to be awarded the Nobel Prize.

A promising performance as the wizard Gandalf in Lord of the Rings was not enough to secure British actor Sir Ian McKellen a best supporting actor award.

That was taken out by fellow Briton Jim Broadbent, who played Judi Dench's beleaguered husband in Iris, the story of author Iris Murdoch.

Alongside the red carpet before the awards, New Zealand and Australia were well represented with supporters making their presence felt.

"Russell Crowe! Russell Crowe!" chanted some spectators, waving Australian and New Zealand flags.

"Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi, oi" chanted the fans of the huge contingent of antipodean nominees.

Crowe, who arrived in an Armani suit with girlfriend Danielle Spencer at his side, said he hoped Howard would do well.

"I'm here to have a good evening and to hang out with a really well-dressed woman," said Crowe.

"We'll just take the night as it comes. I'm hoping it is a positive one for Ron (Howard)."

A pocket full of lucky charms, including a Sydney Rabbitohs pin, a small statue of a wizard, a rubber duck, a tiger and a lucky dollar bill, did not appear to help Crowe himself.

Rings fans also had their say as star hobbit Elijah Wood walked the carpet.

Fans yelled "Frodo, Frodo" when Wood appeared.

"It's slightly crazy," said the 21-year-old actor, who played the lead role as Frodo Baggins the hobbit.

While Wood said he was getting used to the attention from loyal hobbit fans, there was "nothing so strange as people calling me Frodo".

Sir Ian wore a simple dark tuxedo and around his neck a greenstone/pounamu good luck charm from New Zealand.

"You can't buy it for yourself. Somebody has to give it to you," he said. "I wear this most of the time."

Peter Owen, who won the best makeup Oscar, wore a black fringe-covered Moschino tuxedo jacket that looked as if he might jump up and do the Charleston.

While Jackson maintained his shaggy locks, he did don a black tuxedo for the event.