Oscar bravo for the Brits

Rachel Weisz today won her first Oscar. The heavily-pregnant star led the charge for the Brits at the 78th annual Academy Awards, winning best supporting actress for her role in The Constant Gardener.

Weisz beat Brokeback Mountain's Michelle Williams and Catherine Keener in Capote to take the prize. It comes two weeks after she controversially missed out on a Bafta, which went to Reese Witherspoon. An Academy Award secures promotion into the premier league of Hollywood stars and could easily double her earnings. But London-born Weisz, due to give birth in May, now plans to take a break.

She said the baby had been kicking frantically throughout the ceremony: "With the lead-up to that, the adrenaline, the baby was going crazy," she said. "But once I went on the stage I didn't feel anything.

"Because I'm pregnant my brain is a bit like porridge. I think I was a big blank when my name was called. I was just feeling kind of strange."

The actress, who will be 35 tomorrow, also said she had no plans to call her baby "Oscar".

There was disappointment for Britons Keira Knightley and Dame Judi Dench, who were beaten to best actress by Witherspoon for Walk The Line.

But Nick Park won best animated feature film for Wallace & Gromit In The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit. This was his fourth Oscar, but the first for a full-length feature rather than a short. Park took to the podium with fellow animator Steve Box, sporting matching bow ties - and produced mini versions for their statuettes. They paid tribute to the "guys" at film company Aardman Animations, saying, "We all made it together," before walking off shouting: " Cracking cheese, Gromit."

Camberwell-born Irish playwright Martin McDonagh took the Oscar for best live action short with Six-Shooter. In 1997 the 35-year-old, a former most promising playwright winner at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards, had four plays running concurrently in the West End. But he also has a notoriously fiery temper. At the 1996 Evening Standard Theatre Awards, he had a run-in with Sean Connery which ended with the upandcoming writer telling the former James Bond star to "f**k off ".

Crash pulled off one of the greatest shocks in Oscar history after scooping best film. The small independent feature, an ensemble Los Angeles racial drama, beat overwhelming favourite Brokeback Mountain.

It boasts a stellar cast including British actress Thandie Newton, Matt Dillon and Sandra Bullock, but had struggled to secure the finances to be made. Crash also took best original screenplay and best editing. Brokeback Mountain, which had looked unstoppable after winning a string of awards at the Golden Globe and Bafta ceremonies, had to be content with three Oscars. Taiwanese director Ang Lee won best director and the film also won Oscars for best adapted screenplay and best musical score.

On a night when Academy Award organisers were cracking down on lengthy tributes, Witherspoon, 29, who played country star June Carter Cash in Walk The Line, made the longest and most emotional speech. "I never thought I'd be here in my whole life, growing up in Tennessee," she said. "People used to ask June how she was doing, and she would say, 'I'm just trying to matter'. I know what she means."