2003 (76th Annual Awards)
Winners Only

Listed below are the Academy Award winners for the year 2003 (non-winning nominations have been omitted from this list). Click on the name of a film, person or song in the list to display more information about that film, person or song Or, click on a year in the column on the right to display the winners from that year.

Best Picture

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Wingnut Films Production; New Line. (New Zealand, USA) Barrie M. Osborne, Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, Producers.

Actor in a Leading Role

Sean Penn in Mystic River, Warner Bros. Pictures Production; Warner Bros. (USA, Australia)

Actress in a Leading Role

Charlize Theron in Monster, MDP Film Productions and Zodiac Production; Newmarket Films. (Germany, USA)

Actor in a Supporting Role

Tim Robbins in Mystic River, Warner Bros. Pictures Production; Warner Bros. (USA, Australia)

Actress in a Supporting Role

Renée Zellweger in Cold Mountain, Mirage Enterprises/Bona Fide Production; Miramax. (UK, Italy, Romania, USA)

Directing

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Wingnut Films Production; New Line. (New Zealand, USA) Peter Jackson.

Animated Feature Film

Finding Nemo, Pixar Animation Studios Production; Buena Vista. (USA, Australia) Andrew Stanton.

Art Direction-Set Decoration

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Wingnut Films Production; New Line. (New Zealand, USA) Art direction by Grant Major; set decoration by Dan Hennah and Alan Lee.

Cinematography

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, 20th Century Fox and Universal Pictures and Miramax Films Production; 20th Century Fox. Russell Boyd.

Costume Design

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Wingnut Films Production; New Line. (New Zealand, USA) Ngila Dickson and Richard Taylor.

Documentary

(Feature)

The Fog of War, Globe Department Store Production; Sony Pictures Classics. Errol Morris and Michael Williams.

(Short Subject)

Chernobyl Heart, Downtown TV Documentaries Production. Maryann DeLeo.

Film Editing

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Wingnut Films Production; New Line. (New Zealand, USA) Jamie Selkirk.

Foreign Language Film

The Barbarian Invasions, Cinémaginaire Inc. Production; Miramax. (Canada, France) Canada.

Makeup

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Wingnut Films Production; New Line. (New Zealand, USA) Richard Taylor and Peter King.

Music

(Original Score)

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Wingnut Films Production; New Line. (New Zealand, USA) Howard Shore.

(Original Song)

Into the West from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Wingnut Films Production; New Line. (New Zealand, USA) Music and lyric by Fran Walsh, Howard Shore and Annie Lennox.

Short Films

(Animated)

Harvie Krumpet, Melodrama Pictures Production. (Australia) Adam Elliot.

(Live Action)

Two Soldiers, Shoe Clerk Picture Company Production. Aaron Schneider and Andrew J. Sacks.

Sound Editing

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, 20th Century Fox and Universal Pictures and Miramax Films Production; 20th Century Fox. Richard King.

Sound Mixing

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Wingnut Films Production; New Line. (New Zealand, USA) Christopher Boyes, Michael Semanick, Michael Hedges and Hammond Peek.

Visual Effects

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Wingnut Films Production; New Line. (New Zealand, USA) Jim Rygiel, Joe Letteri, Randall William Cook and Alex Funke.

Writing

(Adapted Screenplay)

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Wingnut Films Production; New Line. (New Zealand, USA) Written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson.

(Original Screenplay)

Lost in Translation, American Zoetrope/Elemental Films Production; Focus Features. (USA, Japan) Written by Sofia Coppola.

Honorary Award

To Blake Edwards in recognition of his writing, directing and producing an extraordinary body of work for the screen. [ [Statuette]]

To Douglas Greenfield in appreciation for outstanding service and dedication in upholding the high standards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. [ [John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation]]

Gordon E. Sawyer Award

Peter D. Parks

Scientific and Technical Award

(Academy Award of Merit)

To Digidesign for the design, development and implementation of the Pro Tools digital audio workstation. The efficient algorithms, extensible architecture and intuitive interface have enabled Pro Tools to become the worldwide standard for the creation and editing of motion picture soundtracks.

To Bill Tondreau of Kuper Controls for his significant advancements in the field of motion control technology for motion picture visual effects. Measuring his valuable contributions to the invention and implementation of robotic camera systems in decades rather than years, his efforts have aided motion control in becoming a core technology that has supported the renaissance of visual effects.

(Scientific and Engineering Award)

To Kinoton GmbH for the engineering and development of the Kinoton FP 30/38 EC II Studio Projector. This high-speed studio projector produces an image quality equal to projectors with Geneva movements. With its unparalleled shuttle speed, reversibility and acceleration, this projector has set a new standard for post-production viewing as well as in traditional screening facilities.

To Kenneth L. Tingler, Charles C. Anderson, Diane E. Kestner and Brian A. Schell of the Eastman Kodak Company for the successful development of a process-surviving antistatic layer technology for motion picture film. This technology successfully controls the static buildup on processed intermediate and sound negative films during high speed printing operations.

To Christopher Alfred, Andrew J. Cannon, Michael C. Carlos, Mark Crabtree, Chuck Grindstaff and John Melanson for their significant contributions to the evolution of digital audio editing for motion picture post production. Through their respective pioneering efforts with AMS AudioFile, Waveframe and Fairlight, the work of these gentlemen contributed significantly to the development and realization of digital audio workstations with full editing capabilities for motion picture soundtracks.

To Stephen Regelous for the design and development of Massive, the autonomous agent animation system used for the battle sequences in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Massive takes a new approach in simulating behaviors of large numbers of computer-generated extras a.k.a. “agents.” Each “agent” contains a primitive software “brain” used to develop behavioral rules simulating a wide range of behaviors. In The Lord of the Rings trilogy, over 200,000 agents were controlled in several scenes.

(Technical Achievement Award)

To Kish Sadhvani for the concept and optical design, Paul Duclos for the practical realization and production engineering and Carl Pernicone for the mechanical design and engineering of the portable cine viewfinder system known as the Ultimate Director’s Finder (UDF). This versatile, modular and widely accepted cine viewfinder system is capable of properly displaying images in multiple formats ranging from 35mm anamorphic to super 16.

To Henrik Wann Jensen, Stephen R. Marschner and Pat Hanrahan for their pioneering research in simulating subsurface scattering of light in translucent materials as presented in their paper “A Practical Model for Subsurface Light Transport.” This mathematical model contributed substantially to the development and implementation of practical techniques for simulating subsurface scattering of light in translucent materials for computer-generated images in motion pictures.

To Christophe Hery, Ken McGaugh and Joe Letteri for their groundbreaking implementations of practical methods for rendering skin and other translucent materials using subsurface scattering techniques. These groundbreaking techniques were used to create realistic-looking skin on digitally created characters.