The FINANCIAL — Kate Winslet has won her first Oscar, for best actress, for her performance as a former Nazi death camp guard in The Reader.
The 33-year-old British actress had been nominated for an Academy Award on five previous occasions.
In a widely-predicted win, she beat other nominees for the award who included Meryl Streep for Doubt, Anne Hathaway for Rachel Getting Married, Angelina Jolie for Changeling and Melissa Leo for Frozen River.
She has already won a BAFTA award, two Golden Globes and a Screen Actors Guild award this season but her emotional, breathless acceptance speech made clear her delight at finally securing an Oscar.
"To the academy thank you so much. My God," she said, adding that she had dreamed of winning an Oscar for a long time.
"I'd be lying if I haven't made a version of this speech before. I think I was probably eight years old and staring into the bathroom mirror and this would have been a shampoo bottle," she said.
"It's not a shampoo bottle now. I feel very fortunate to have made it all the way from there to here and I'd like to thank some of the people along the way who had faith in me."
She also called on her father to whistle from the audience so she could see him in the crowd, which he did.
"I can't believe we're in a category with Meryl Streep at all," Winslet said. "I'm sorry, Meryl, but you have to just suck that up."
She was also praised for her role as a disillusioned housewife in Revolutionary Road alongside Leonardo di Caprio, her co-star in Titanic.
Released within two weeks of The Reader, Revolutionary Road was widely regarded as her stronger performance.
In The Reader, she plays Hanna Schmitz, a former Nazi prison guard who begins an affair with a teenage boy more than a decade later.
Winslet, who is married to the Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes, has two young children.
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