This year's Academy Awards proved to be one of the tightest and most difficult to predict ever.

Anyone hoping to find a clear winner in the lead-up award ceremonies would have been hard pushed to pick a clear favourite.

Lord of the Rings won best film at the Baftas, Moulin Rouge took the US National Board of Review's top prize while In The Bedroom was named best drama by the International Press Academy.

But it was the Golden Globes which came closest to picking the eventual winners on Oscar night.

Jennifer Connelly won best supporting actress

A Beautiful Mind won best dramatic film at the Globes and Jennifer Connelly and Jim Broadbent were both winners in the supporting actors categories.

The Globes also predicted the best foreign language movie, with Bosnia's No Man's Land beating the hotly tipped French romantic-comedy Ameile.

Ron Howard's Oscar win for best director for A Beautiful Mind was one of the very few predicted victories.

The former TV actor won the outstanding directorial achievement at the Directors' Guild Awards (DGA).

The DGA winner has won the best director Oscar in 49 out of the last 53 years.

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Anyone hoping to guess the winners after the Baftas would have been sorely disappointed.

Sissy Spacek won a Golden Globe Award

The Baftas only predicted one correct major prize winner - Connelly taking home best supporting actress for A Beautiful Mind.

Broadbent did win a Bafta, but for Moulin Rouge and not for his Oscar-winning performance in Iris.

In the Bedroom's Sissy Spacek was 4/6 favourite to pick up best actress at the Oscars after her wins at the Golden Globes and the Los Angeles Film Critics' Association.

But it was Halle Berry's performance in Monster's Ball which wowed the Academy voters, as well as at the Screen Actors' Guild Awards and the National Board of Review.