Kate Winslet managed to keep her composure as she accepted her first Academy Award after five failed nominations.

Celebrating in style: Kate Winslet and Sam Mendes

Mindful of her teary performance at last month's Golden Globes, the 33-year-old Brit was emotional, but not gushing as she accepted her best actress Oscar for The Reader, in which she plays a German woman with a grim secret.

She called out to her father, Roger, among the 3,500 people crammed into Hollywood's Kodak Theatre. "Dad, whistle or something 'cos then I'll know where you are," she said. As the room quietened, he whistled from his seat. Winslet told the audience: "I'd be lying if I said I haven't made a version of this speech before.

"I think I was probably eight years old and staring into the bathroom mirror and this [Oscar] would be a shampoo bottle. But it's not a shampoo bottle now."

She thanked her husband, the director Sam Mendes, and described her fellow nominees - including Meryl Streep - as "goddesses".

Winslet said: "I think we all can't believe we're in a category with Meryl Streep at all. I'm sorry, Meryl, but you have to just suck that up!

And, just to the Academy, thank you so much, my God. Thank you."Speaking backstage, she said she was going to go and get "very drunk", adding: "I feel like an unlikely hero. I was not the privileged kid things like this could happen to." Her previous Academy

Award nominations were for the films Titanic, Sense And Sensibility, Iris, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind and Little Children.