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Best Picture: “No Country for Old Men”
“No Country for Old Men” also won Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem), Directing (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen), and Writing – Adapted Screenplay (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen).
A 100-day, industry-wide Writers Guild of America strike was resolved 12 days before the Academy Awards ceremony was scheduled to take place, allowing the show to proceed as planned.
Jon Stewart was the host.
For the first time since 1964, all of the acting winners were non-Americans. Great Britain’s Daniel Day-Lewis won Best Actor for “There Will Be Blood” and Tilda Swinton was named Best Supporting Actress for “Michael Clayton.” France’s Marion Cotillard received Best Actress honors for “La Vie en Rose” and Spain’s Javier Bardem won Best Supporting Actor for “No Country for Old Men.” Marion Cotillard’s victory made her only the third performer in a foreign language film to win one of the Academy’s acting prizes, following Sophia Loren in 1961’s “Two Women” and Roberto Benigni in 1998’s “Life Is Beautiful.”
Joel and Ethan Coen won for their direction of “No Country for Old Men.” It was only the second time in Oscar history that two individuals shared the directing honor (Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins were the first, winning for 1961’s “West Side Story”).
In July 2007, the seventh and final Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was released and sold 8.3 million copies in the U.S. alone within the first 24 hours.
In November 2007, the Writers Guild of America strike began as last-minute negotiations between screenwriters and producers to avert a walkout failed. More than 12,000 movie and television writers represented by the Writers Guild of America, West and the Writers Guild of America, East began the first industry-wide strike since writers walked out in 1988.
Honorary Award
To Robert Boyle in recognition of one of cinema’s great careers in art direction.