British wit and class trumped the multi-billion-dollar budgets of Hollywood as The King's Speech triumphed at this year's Academy Awards.

The movie, made for £9 million, stormed past its big American rival The Social Network to take best picture as well as honours for its director and writer, and the widely predicted best actor gong for Colin Firth.

The story of how George VI overcame his stammer took four honours against three for The Social Network.

The victory was marked with self-deprecatory wit by Colin Firth, 50, who warned the audience in Los Angeles that he felt like dancing, thanked wife Livia for putting up with his "fleeting delusions of royalty" and joked: "I have a feeling my career just peaked."

Best-dressed stars on the red carpet at the Oscars
Oscars parties: The Governors Ball, Vanity Fair and Sir Elton John's bash
Video: Red carpet style trends at the Oscar 2011
How The King's Speech conquered Hollywood and dominated the Oscars

The success was particularly sweet for the film's London-born screenwriter David Seidler, 73, who developed a stutter when his family fled wartime Britain.

Seidler had waited nearly three decades to see the project realised after the Queen Mother asked him to hold off until she was no longer alive to see her husband's battle depicted on stage or screen. He thanked the Queen for "not putting me in the Tower of London" despite his depiction of her late father swearing, and dedicated the win to "all the stutterers throughout the world - we have a voice, we have been heard".

Yet director Tom Hooper, 38, said it would never have happened without his mother, Meredith, who spotted the story's potential at a reading of Seidler's script, then a play, at the Pleasance theatre in Islington four years ago.

The film's success had made him realise that you had to search for good stories as until now "I didn't quite believe there were masterpieces sitting unread in attics," he said afterwards. "I thought that there were scouts and, if there was a good script, we'd all know it. But this play failed to be produced as a fringe theatre play."

Tanya Seghatchian, of the UK Film Council which helped finance the movie before being abolished, hailed the awards haul as a "magnificent final chapter" for the council's work.

"The rise of The King's Speech from a British independent film to a worldwide commercial and critical phenomenon is a huge testament to the creators, the cast and everyone involved," she said.

London-born director Christopher Nolan secured four honours for his thriller Inception and Alice in Wonderland, made in the UK by Tim Burton, took another two technical awards. But The Fighter, a true-life story about boxer Micky Ward, deprived Firth's co-stars, Helena Bonham Carter and Geoffrey Rush, of the best supporting actor awards. Melissa Leo deployed the F word to accept the supporting actress award and Welsh actor Christian Bale took his first Oscar for playing a drug-addicted boxer. He asked Dicky Eklund, whom he plays in the film, to take a bow from the audience.

Afterwards Bonham Carter said: "I have a little dip but then you get over it," adding: "I do think people like you more if you lose."

A heavily pregnant Natalie Portman, 29, provided the obligatory Oscars tears as she accepted best actress for Black Swan on which she met choreographer Benjamin Millepied, now her fiancé and father of her child.

However, there was disappointment for graffiti artist Banksy and London film-maker Lucy Walker, who both lost out in the documentary category, and for Crouch End director Ian Barnes in the best live action short category.

Best-dressed stars on the red carpet at the Oscars
Oscars parties: The Governors Ball, Vanity Fair and Sir Elton John's bash
Video: Red carpet style trends at the Oscar 2011
How The King's Speech conquered Hollywood and dominated the Oscars

BEST PICTURE:
'The King's Speech'

BEST ACTOR:
Colin Firth - 'The King's Speech'

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
Melissa Leo - 'The Fighter'

BEST ACTRESS:
Natalie Portman - 'Black Swan'

BEST DIRECTOR:
Tom Hooper - 'The King's Speech'

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Christian Bale - 'The Fighter'

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:
Aaron Sorkin - 'The Social Network'

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:
David Seidler - 'The King's Speech'

CINEMATOGRAPHY:
Wally Pfister - 'Inception'

BEST FILM EDITING:
Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter - 'The Social Network'

DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM:
'Strangers No More'

SHORT FILM:
Luke Matheny - 'God Of Love'

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE:
'Inside Job'

BEST MAKE-UP:
'The Wolfman'

BEST ORIGINAL SONG:
'We Belong Together' - 'Toy Story 3'

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM:
'The Lost Thing'

BEST ANIMATED FILM:
'Toy Story 3'

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE:
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross - 'The Social Network'

SOUND MIXING:
Gary A Rizzo & Ed Novick - 'Inception'

SOUND EDITING:
Richard King - 'Inception'

VISUAL EFFECTS:
Ken Ralston, David Schaub, Carey Villegas and Sean Phillips - 'Alice in Wonderland'

COSTUME DESIGN:
Colleen Atwood - 'Alice in Wonderland'

ART DIRECTION:
Robert Stromberg (production design); Karen O'Hara (set decoration) - 'Alice in Wonderland'

FOREIGN FILM:
'In a Better World' (Denmark)

BIGGEST LOSER IS REMAKE OF TRUE GRIT
By David Sexton
The Oscars are pretty predictable. The Academy votes only after all the other awards have been presented and popularity has been fully registered at the box office. They're sifting the already sifted. That's why the talk beforehand is of "momentum", not plain old good and bad.

This year, the nearest thing to an upset was that early frontrunner The Social Network was overtaken by The King's Speech. Our hesitant monarch didn't just score best actor and best original screenplay, for which he was always a cert, but best film and best director, too. It is a huge triumph for independent film-makers and British cinema and everybody who has seen the movie - just about every filmgoer in the land - knows it's roundly deserved. The King's Speech delivers on all fronts. It entertains, it moves, it instructs. It's much more than a nostalgia-fest.

Some people may be unhappy about the strong sympathies - for this king at least, perhaps for the monarchy more generally - that it stirs. No matter. The film itself has been crowned. All we need is to hear what the Queen thinks of the portrayal of her mum and dad. An indiscretion someone, please?

Biggest loser was True Grit, which had 10 nominations and, solely because of extraordinarily strong competition, won nothing at all, not even for its superb cinematography.

The excellence of The Fighter as an ensemble piece was recognised by both best supporting actor and actress awards, unfair though that emphasis may seem to star Mark Wahlberg. And Natalie Portman's crazy ballerina in the horror-dance extravaganza Black Swan was a once in a lifetime performance that had to be acknowledged.

Banksy watchers were disappointed not to see how he would have taken it if his Exit Through the Gift Shop had won best documentary, but the victory of Inside Job, the exposé of the bankers' role in the 2008 crash, is specially to be welcomed. It's a film to be seen by as many as possible, not for the way it is made but for what it reveals - the definition of great documentary.
So the Academy got it plainly right this year. Consensus works. Mostly.

Only two stars in Dior after Galliano storm

Nicole Kidman was one of only two major stars to wear Dior to the Oscars, amid the furore surrounding the label's chief designer, John Galliano.

The choice of dresses on the red carpet drew extra attention after Galliano's suspension, following his allegedly anti-Semitic remarks at a Paris café.

All eyes were on best actress winner Natalie Portman, who was recently announced as the new face of Dior Cherie perfume. But she neatly sidestepped the issue by wearing a gown from Rodarte, the avant-garde label of sisters Laura and Kate Mulleavy, who also designed the costumes for The Black Swan.

The heavily pregnant actress was one of the last to arrive at the awards, and she refused to answer any questions about her involvement with the Dior brand.

Sharon Stone, a face of the label until 2008, wore a one-shouldered Dior gown in black with feather detail. The actress was dropped as the face of Dior in China after saying the country's devastating earthquake was the result of "bad karma" over its treatment of Tibet.

Charlize Theron, current face of Dior perfume Darling, wore a Versace gown at the Vanity Fair after-party.That left Kidman to support Galliano with a white Oriental-inspired gown.

The designer faced fresh allegations today after a video emerged apparently showing him drunkenly telling two women he believed to be Jewish that he "loved Hitler" and their parents "should have been gassed".

Dior was unavailable for comment.