She had won almost every best-supporting actress honor under the sun this awards season, so the best acting job at the 81st Academy Awards might have been that of the first winner. Penelope Cruz professed shock.

"Has anyone ever fainted up here? I might be the first!"

The "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" star was — like all of the early winners at last night's Oscars — a heavy favorite. She had to be the least shocked woman in the Kodak Theatre.

As expected, the big winner was "Slumdog Millionaire," collecting eight Oscars, including best picture and best director for Danny Boyle.

"You've been so generous to us this evening," Boyle enthused. And he praised the ceremony as well. "I don't know what it played like on television, but in the room it's bloody wonderful."

Hugh Jackman and the Oscar producers promised a re-invented show. And Jackman, a singing, dancing, acting triple threat, gave the show a touch of offhanded class. The Aussie proved himself a trouper, hoofing it through a vampy opening number and a time-wasting movie-musicals duet with Beyonce.

Having five Oscar winners from the past come out and name the nominees for the acting awards made it a "different kind of show," awkward and long winded. But nobody was "played off," which was nice.

There weren't going to be many surprises. Kate Winslet finally won her Oscar for "The Reader," six nominations into her career.

"I'd be lying if I said I haven't made a version of this speech since I was about 8 years old, looking into the bathroom mirror," Winslet gushed. She stopped, midspeech, to try to find her dad in the audience — "Whistle or something," followed by an obliging piercing blast from the far end of the theater.

"Wall-E," Pixar's comic commentary on consumerism and its consequences, took best animated film.

"It's such an inspiration to spend time with a character who finds the beauty in everything he sees, a noble aspiration to have in times like these," said director Andrew Stanton.

The most nominated film, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," picked up makeup, visual effects and art direction Oscars.

"Milk" won best original screenplay (Dustin Lance Black) and best actor for Sean Penn (his second Oscar). "You commie, homo-loving sons of guns," Penn called the audience.

But "Slumdog Millionaire" won the best director, best score, adapted screenplay, best song, editing, sound mixing and cinematography Oscars. "The Duchess," the elegant period piece, won for best costume design. The favorite "Man on Wire" won best documentary. The Japanese "Departures" was a surprise winner for best foreign language film.

Jerry Lewis, receiving the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, was humble, gracious and brief.

"This award touches my heart and the very depth of my soul," he said. "The humility I feel is staggering. And I will carry it with me the rest of my life."

"The Dark Knight," last year's biggest hit, won only two Oscars, one being sound mixing.

The theater quieted to a hush when Heath Ledger's father, mother and sister came onstage to accept his posthumous best-supporting actor Oscar. Ledger died after finishing his work as The Joker in "The Dark Knight."

Ledger's dad, Kim, thanked the Academy for acknowledging "Heath's quiet determination to be truly accepted by you all here, his peers within an industry he so loved."