LOS ANGELES — Best actor and actress Oscar winners Russell Crowe and Julia Roberts were full of high spirits backstage, toying with the reporters who held up numbers to ask questions.
"No. 5, your meal is ready. I think it's the medium T-bone steak, sir," Crowe said as a card was flashed in front of him.
Roberts played mock auctioneer.
"Seventy-three, going once," she called out. "This is the weirdest auction of all, which is like I'm auctioning off this" — she held up her Oscar — "which would just be so wrong."
Despite her exuberant acceptance speech thanking "everybody I've ever known," best-actress Oscar winner Julia Roberts forgot to acknowledge a key person in her win — the real Erin Brockovich.
"During my out of body experience, I didn't acknowledge her, shamefully," Roberts told reporters backstage. "With great humility, I acknowledge her profusely. She is the center of the universe which is our movie. She knows the esteem in which I hold her."
Brockovich did not attend the ceremony.
Steven Soderbergh's best director Academy Award for "Traffic" won't change his edgy style.
The filmmaker, who also was nominated for directing "Erin Brockovich," said he plans to stay true to his independent roots. His first film was 1989's "sex, lies and videotape."
"I've always followed the same methodology from my first film up to the one I'm shooting right now," he said.
The way movies are produced shouldn't matter as much as the quality of the finished product, he added.
"I've said from the beginning that I don't delineate between studio films and independent films, but between good and bad movies," he said. "We all want to see good films."
"Traffic" screenwriter Stephen Gaghan drew on his personal battle with drug addiction to adapt the Oscar-winning script.
"I was killing myself in the most cowardly way imaginable," Gaghan said backstage in describing his drug use. "It went on and on, longer than you would imagine."
One day, Gaghan said, he "hit the wall" and reached out for help.
"I'm lucky to be alive," he said.
"Traffic" was adapted from a British miniseries.
So who was with whom at the Oscars?
"Almost Famous" star Kate Hudson came with her new rocker-husband Chris Robinson of The Black Crowes. Michael Douglas escorted wife Catherine Zeta-Jones. Joaquin Phoenix was with his mother, Hart. Cameron Crowe brought his mom, too.
Tom Hanks arrived with wife Rita Wilson, Goldie Hawn was there with Kurt Russell, Julia Roberts was on the arm of Benjamin Bratt and Jennifer Lopez was with dancer Cris Judd.
Tom Cruise showed up on stage near the end of the show to present the best director Oscar. Estranged wife Nicole Kidman wasn't anywhere in sight.
Even at the Oscars, Tom Hanks was upstaged by his "Cast Away" co-star, Wilson.
That's the name his island-bound character gave to a volleyball that washed ashore on his desolate beach.
"Nice hats!" he said, waving to three fans in the red-carpet bleachers who donned volleyball halves on their heads.
"I've got to add sports equipment to 'kids' and 'dogs' on the list of who not to work with," Hanks said, citing an old Hollywood aphorism.
Wilson "got all the best lines and he's getting all the merchandising," he cracked.
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma wore the largest fashion accessory on the Oscar red carpet.
The classical musician arrived with his $2.5-million, 266-year-old cello strapped to his back.
"I left it in the back of a taxi cab a few years ago," Ma said. "So now I think it's safer to keep it with me at all times."
The large, blue case fit over his shoulders with backpack straps and was adorned with stickers from the Pokemon children's cartoon. Ma attended the ceremony to perform a medley of music from the best original score category.
Oscar-winning makeup artist Rick Baker said he owed a debt to Jim Carrey.
Baker, who won an Academy Award for designing Carrey's makeup in "Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas," said the actor suffered nearly three months of discomfort under layers of heavy, constricting latex and green paint.
"He hated it," Baker said backstage at the Shrine Auditorium. "He has been quite vocal about it. You've probably heard him complain about how he felt like he was buried alive."
The actor wore the outfit for 92 days, Baker added.
Homeless for 73 years, the Academy Awards bid farewell to the venerable Shrine Auditorium and will settle down to a place of its own next year.
The Shrine south of downtown has hosted Hollywood's big night 10 times.
"Next year we're going back to Hollywood where the Academy Awards actually started. It's going to be great to be back home," said Robert Rehme, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The new home of the Oscars, the 3,300-seat Kodak Theater still under construction, is next to the historic Chinese Theatre and across the street from the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, where the first Oscars were held.