Spacey Wins Oscar for Best Supporting Actor

Kevin Spacey, who played the verbal con man in “The Usual Suspects,” received an Academy Award on Monday night as best supporting actor.

“Whoever Keyser Soze is, I can tell you he’s going to get gloriously drunk tonight,” Spacey said.

“And that’s a question that I’m often asked: Who is Keyser Soze? And I’ve always been very cryptic about my answer. But tonight I’m going to tell you who Keyser Soze is for me. The person who pulls the strings, the person who manipulates, who hovers over us, who gives us life and breath. For me, Keyser Soze is Bryan Singer, the director of this film.”

Spacey also thanked his mother “for driving me to those acting classes on Ventura Boulevard when I was 16. I told you they would pay off.”

The first award of the night went to “Restoration” for costume. “Braveheart” won for makeup.

The awards were considered to be among the closest in a decade, with many critics picking completely different winners. The nomination votes were so divergent that the directors of two leading candidates for best picture, “Apollo 13” and “Sense and Sensibility,” weren’t nominated for directing.

This year’s controversy surfaced immediately. Host Whoopi Goldberg used her opening monologue to defuse the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s call to protest the show because only one black person was nominated for an Oscar.

Goldberg, who like the show’s producer Quincy Jones is black, ridiculed Jackson’s call for participants to wear multicolored ribbons. She reeled off a list of imaginary ribbons in her collection, including the traditional red ribbon for AIDS awareness, a “milky white ribbon for mad cow disease” and a “fake fur ribbon for animal rights.”

Her message for Jackson: “You don’t ask a black woman to buy an expensive dress and then cover it with ribbons.”

Only one of the 166 nominees this year--short-film director Dianne Houston--is black. Jackson pointed out how many worthy black performances, including by Denzel Washington in “Devil in a Blue Dress,” Laurence Fishburne in “Othello” and Angela Bassett in “Waiting to Exhale,” were not honored.

Jackson led about 75 marchers outside the Hollywood offices of KABC-TV across town from the award ceremonies. He called for similar demonstrations at other ABC stations across the country as the network broadcast the awards show.

In awards announced earlier but presented Monday night, three stalwarts received special Oscars. Kirk Douglas, who has never won an acting Academy Award, received an honorary Oscar for his “50 years as a creative and moral force in the making of motion picture community.”

John Lasseter, director and co-writer of the computer-animated “Toy Story,” received a special achievement Oscar. Lasseter won an Oscar in 1988 for his short film “Tin Toy,” which showcased the same animation techniques.

Animator Chuck Jones, who drew Bugs Bunny, Wile E. Coyote and Daffy Duck, also received an honorary Oscar. Jones, whose work appears in more than 300 films, won a short film Academy Award for 1965’s “The Dot and the Line.”

The Oscars were voted on by 5,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Nominations are made by specific branches (actors nominate actors, cinematographers nominate cinematographers) while winners in almost all categories are decided by the entire academy. To vote in the documentary, foreign-language and short film categories, members must have seen all the nominated works.