Oscar Fever Hits Hollywood's A-List

Jan. 23, 2009 — -- From Paris to India to the snowy slopes at the Sundance Film Festival, Oscar-mania has swept the globe after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled its newest nominees.

In Paris, Brad Pitt and director David Fincher learned that their sweeping film, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," had garnered 13 nominations, including best picture and best actor for Pitt, who remained cool and collected.

"The Oscars are our highest honor, so it's great fun for the movie to get acknowledged," Pitt told reporters in the City of Light where he was promoting the film. "But it's not the goal. It's a fickle business. They're to be enjoyed if you're invited, and they're to be enjoyed if you're not."

New to the party this year is "Slumdog Millionaire" director Danny Boyle, who could hardly contain his joy in Mumbai, India, after learning his rags-to-riches tale had picked up 10 nods. It was a full-circle moment for Boyle and the cast he'd plucked from obscurity as they celebrated the Hollywood honor in the Bollywood city where "Slumdog" was made.

Watch the Oscars Live Telecast, Feb. 22, 2009 on ABC TV

"Vodafone's [cell phone] profits are going through the roof as everybody tries to call everybody," he told reporters in Mumbai as he got ready for Slumdog's premiere. "It's unbelievable."

Word of Heath Ledger's posthumous best supporting actor nomination for "The Dark Knight" prompted "pride and excitement" from the actor's family in his hometown of Perth, Australia, but the celebration was bittersweet, as the news came on the one-year anniversary of Ledger's death.

"It seems like merely yesterday, and we are all still nursing broken hearts," said Kate Ledger, one of the actor's sisters.

She and Ledger's two other sisters, Ashleigh Bell and Olivia Ledger, read a statement today at Cottesloe Beach, the site of Ledger's memorial service last year.

"In Heath's words, he had the time of his life portraying the Joker and said that it was the most fun he'd ever had working on a film," Bell said.

Back in the Western Hemisphere, Ledger's "Brokeback Mountain" co-star Anne Hathaway basked in the glow of her first Oscar nomination, a best actress nod for playing a manic sister-of-the-bride in "Rachel Getting Married."