Oscar nominees who don't end up with a coveted gold statuette at the Academy Awards on Sunday won't go home empty handed after all.

Hollywood stars wanting to look their best for Tinseltown's biggest night of the year are being offered beauty treatments.

Veteran French actress Emmanuelle Riva, 85, the oldest ever Academy award nominee for her role in Michael Haneke's Amour, says it would be great to win the best actress Oscar at this stage of her life.

Multiple Grammy winner Adele is reportedly practising Chinese Qi Gong breathing therapy in a bid to beat her stage fright ahead of her comeback performance at the Oscars next week.

How accurate is Zero Dark Thirty? Is Lincoln an epic of historical recreation or a high school history lesson? What did you think of Django Unchained? Can we get Anne Hathaway something to eat, already?

She landed the part by lying about her age: Quvenzhane Wallis was five, and the filmmakers were only auditioning girls at least six years old.

With 11 Academy Awards nominations – second only to Lincoln with 12 – and the sort of global box-office receipts normally reserved for superheroes, Life of Pi is one of the most unusual megahits ever to hit the big-screen.

Here are reactions from directors or actors involved in all nine of this year's best film Oscar candidates, after the announcement of nominations for the 85th Academy Awards on Thursday.

The producers of this year's Oscars show said Monday they have no big red button to press in case boundary-pushing host Seth MacFarlane oversteps the mark. They voiced confidence in the Family Guy creator as more than 160 nominees attended a traditional Oscar luncheon in Beverly Hills.

Skyfall won five Oscar nominations on Thursday, the highest tally for a 007 picture, but the major categories including best picture once again eluded the franchise that has just celebrated its 50th anniversary.