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HOLLYWOOD, Feb 24, 2008 (AFP) - Javier Bardem became the first ever Spanish winner of an acting Oscar here Sunday, picking up the best supporting actor award for his portrayal of a psychopathic hitman in "No Country for Old Men."
"This is pretty amazing. It's a great honor for me to have this," Bardem said as he accepted his Oscar at the Kodak Theater.
Bardem, 38, had been the overwhelming favorite for the statuette after a clean sweep of other major awards heading into the Oscars.
Bardem's performance as the killer who likes to execute his victims with a slaughterhouse cattle gun has been hailed as an iconic portrait of evil in the film directed by the Coen brothers likely to become a cinematic landmark.
"Thank you to the Coens for being crazy enough to think I could do that and put one of the most horrible hair cuts in history on my head," he added, before finishing his speech in Spanish paying tribute to his mother, who accompanied him to the awards.
The award confirmed Bardem's reputation as one of cinema's most versatile performers, following his Oscar-nominated turn as a gay poet in 2001's "Before Night Falls" and as a bed-ridden paralysis victim in 2004's "The Sea Inside."
Other nominees for Sunday's award were Casey Affleck ("The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"), Hal Holbrook ("Into the Wild"), Philip Seymour Hoffman ("Charlie Wilson's War") and Tom Wilkinson ("Michael Clayton").
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