Among millions watching the Oscars ceremony live on networks beamed across the globe, one viewer was notable by his absence.

John Byrne, the Scottish writer and artist, did not tune in to watch his long-term partner Tilda Swinton pick up a gong for best supporting actress, he said - the couple do not have a television in their home in Nairn, near Inverness.

Byrne, 68, received the news shortly after 4am by more traditional means when Swinton, 47, rang to tell him of her surprise win. "It's fantastic, absolutely wonderful," Byrne told The Herald yesterday. "Of course, Tilda was very thrilled. It is richly deserved for her. She was very, very surprised and totally floored by it."

Swinton, whose relationship with Byrne recently attracted media interest after her public appearances alongside her former co-star Sandro Kopp, was among four Europeans to carry off Hollywood's top acting accolades in Sunday night's ceremony, which left some of America's biggest stars in the shade.

Daniel Day-Lewis won best actor for his role as an oil prospector in the early 20th century in There Will Be Blood, by director Paul Thomas Anderson.

The powerhouse performance has left critics in awe, and he was clear favourite after winning a series of other awards for the role. Swinton, who has spent most of her movie career acting in art house films but won fame with pictures such as The Beach and Narnia, was the surprise winner of the supporting actress Oscar as a shifty lawyer in the legal thriller Michael Clayton, beating Australia's Cate Blanchett, whose portrayal of Bob Dylan in I'm Not There had ranked her as favourite.

It is the first time since 1964 that the top four acting awards have all gone to artists from outside the United States, where the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is based.

France's Marion Cotillard was named best actress for her role as tragic singer Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose - the first French woman to win the award since Simone Signoret in 1960.

Javier Bardem won best supporting actor for his brooding performance as a killer of few words and a very dodgy haircut in the Coen brother's violent drama No Country For Old Men. It was the first Oscar for a Spanish actor in the 80-year history of the awards.

"There were also wonderful performances by American actors that could equally have been recognised," Day-Lewis said backstage.

Bardem's Oscar was one of four won by No Country For Old Men, which took more gongs than any other film in spite of modest box office takings. Joel and Ethan Coen, who are known for working outside the Hollywood system, picked up best movie, director and adapted screenplay. The film, based on Cormac McCarthy's novel about a drug deal gone wrong in south Texas, speaks to the moral decline of society and was among four sombre movies up for best picture. Joel Coen said his brother had taken a camera to the airport as a boy in the 1960s to make an amateur film, Henry Kissinger, Man on the Go. "Honestly, what we do now doesn't feel that much different from what we did then," he said.

The best animated film award went to box office hit Ratatouille while stripper-turned-writer Diablo Cody won the best original screenplay award for the hopeful teen pregnancy comedy Juno.

The daughter of Major-General Sir John Swinton, a former lord lieutenant of Berwickshire, Swinton was partly educated at Fettes College in Edinburgh.

The sound-mixing win for The Bourne Ultimatum extended the years of Oscar futility for Kevin O'Connell, a nominee for Transformers, who holds an academy record: 20 nominations, no wins.