As we predicted, Australian actress Cate Blanchett has won the Oscar for best actress at the 86th Academy Awards for Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine. Blanchett was the overwhelming favorite to win the statuette for her career best performance as a neurotic - perhaps psychotic - woman whose life is turned upside down when her rich husband is discovered to be a crook. 

Woody AllenWoody Allen Working On The Set of 'Blue Jasmine'

Blanchett - who paid tribute to her late friend Philip Seymour Hoffman when winning the same award at the BAFTA's last month - told the audience, "Sit down too old to be standing."

The Australian actress then thanked Daniel Day Lewis for presenting her with the honor, as well as ackknowledging all her co-nominees work, in "a year of extradinary performances by women," citing that Amy Adams' role in 'American Hustle' "blew her mind."

Blanchett thanked the director Woody Allen for casting her in the role, and was "very proud that Blue Jasmine stayed in the cinemas for as long as it did..and to the audiences that went to see it."

She also slammed the old-fashioned view that films with women as lead characters arn't as successful as male driven movies, by stating "audiences want to see them, and they earn money," which was greeted with a huge cheer for the crowd. 

Blanchett finished by thanking her family, husband, and three children, and "the extadinary cast of Blue Jasmine," she also paid tribute to her native Austraila by telling the audience "there is so much talent," over there. 

It was Blanchett's fifth Oscar nomination and second win, after she landed the best supporting actress statuette for Martin Scorsese's The Aviator in 2005. She had also received nods for Elizabeth: The Golden Age, I'm Not There, Notes on a Scandal and Elizabeth.

Blue Jasmine was heralded by critics upon its release in 2013. 

"In its basic situation can be heard the distant clang of A Streetcar Named Desire, though it's neither pastiche nor reprise, just a quietly respectful tribute," said The Independent. 

Blue Jasmine's Oscar campaign was derailed somewhat when Woody Allen's step daughter Dylan Farrow accused the director of sexual abuse. In her open letter in the New York Times, Farrow name-checked Blanchett and a host of other stars that have worked with Allen, including Louis CK and Alec Baldwin.

Watch the 'Blue Jasmine' trailer: