Red-carpet fashion and beauty coverage:

• Vote on all the fashion and beauty Oscar red carpet polls
• 2012 Oscars: who should win best dressed?
• The ladies bring their best looks to the glamorous Oscars red carpet
• Oscars 2012: find out who wore what
• Oscars' most dazzling duos
• Heidi Klum, Nina Dobrev, and more hit up Elton John's Oscar party
• Oscars trendspotting: train gang
• Hollywood glamour dazzles at Oscar parties
• Stars step out in style at Vanity Fair's Oscar party
• Oscars trendspotting: the white idea
• Oscars trendspotting: cool shoulders
• The Oscars' best bags and baubles
• See all the Oscars beauty looks!
• Get up close and personal with the night's best makeup looks

The list of all the winners, press room excitement, and much more!

• See the entire list of 2012 Oscar winners
• Bret McKenzie says he can't wait to play his "Oscar card"
• Octavia Spencer calls her Oscar win "fan-effing-tastic"
• Christopher Plummer says he "loves Oscar" in the press room
• Meryl Streep, The Artist, and Hugo win big — and more Oscars highlights!
• Video: Octavia Spencer gets emotional thanking her Help family during Oscar speech
• Get the 411 on The Artist's Bérénice Bejo and her date
• See which couples stepped out together on the red carpet
• Oscars eye candy: hottie or nottie?
• Stars share their Oscar night with family and friends
• Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt mix and mingle at the Oscars

Octavia Spencer completed her award season sweep with the Oscar for best supporting actress for her role in The Help. After giving a very teary speech on stage, Spencer dried her eyes and cracked jokes back in the press room. She talked about how humbled she is by her win, her deep love and respect for her cast mates, and why you can't take yourself too seriously in showbiz.

On the tone of the film: We wanted to make the movie that Kathryn Stockett had envisioned when she wrote the book. I don't think there's anything lighthearted abut the civil rights movement, but if you can have a laugh every other 10 minutes while you watch the struggle, then I have no problem with it.

On her upcoming plans: Tonight I am going to find my cast mates and I'm actually going to have a quarter of a glass of champagne and hang out. I think we all start projects within the next couple of days, but I'm just gonna live in this moment because lord knows it's never gonna happen again.

On what the cast meant to her: It's very rare that you have the type of ensemble that we had. You don't get all the Academy Award nominees and winners coming together to do a project. And then you have the collaboration of Academy Award nominees behind the scenes. We just left our egos at the door and worked together as one beautiful unit. It was an award-winning cast. So to be a part of that, and to just sort of dissolve into the world that we were representing is something that we're supposed to do as actors, but it was rare that we did it without judgment of each other.

On her love affair with The Help: The word I want to use, I can't. I want to say fan-effing-tastic. But we'll leave the "effing" out. Fantastic. It is humbling, the love affair I have with The Help. I'm a benefactor of all of the riches that the real life Minnys, Aibileens, Cosntantines, Skeeters, that they basically reaped. And so I am very humbled because I get to stand here and accept this award and I haven't really done anything.

On what she was feeling at the moment she won and advice: Really and truly I was just trying not to fall down. This is one of those evenings in my life that I'll never forget. I hope it's the hallmark for more aspiring actresses of color, and by color I don't just mean African American. I hope that in some way I can be some sort of beacon of hope. Especially because I am not the typical Hollywood beauty.

On her advice for aspiring actresses: Get a great designer because you don't know if you're gonna be on TV or not. I think that you have to believe in yourself, and you have to work very hard. You can't think that you're the best thing that sliced bread, because there are going to be Viola Davises, Jessica Chastains, Emma Stones, who are the best things since sliced bread. Take it seriously, but don't take yourself too seriously.

On her dream role: I don't have one role that I want to play. I guess I want to be a producer. I want be an activist. I want to be proactive in bringing about work for men, women, boys, girls, that are good at what they do and deserve a shot at it. I want to have a presence behind the scenes and in front of the camera. I want to be a jack of all trades and hopefully decent at one of them.

Meryl Streep pulled out a major upset at the Oscars tonight when she beat out Viola Davis for best actress. It marks Streep's third Oscar (and 17th nomination!), but being a seasoned veteran didn't stop her from showing her excitement backstage in the press room. Streep joked about The Academy being sick of her, gave advice for young women, and talked about why she doesn't take anything for granted.

On what went through her mind when she won: They call your name and you just sort of go into a white light. And it was just thrilling. And it was like I was a kid again — and I was a kid the last time I won. Two of the nominees were not even conceived the last time I won!

On whether or not she got to meet Margaret Thatcher: No, I didn't, but I studied her and I studied. And then the challenge was to imagine her present life, and that was completely on active imagination. There was a lot of freedom in that, but also responsibility to a real person and to history. It was really, very, very satisfying as an actor, as an artist, to make a film that starts out about Margaret Thatcher and ends up being really about all of us.

On how she makes time for personal relationships: It's the juggle and the challenge that we [women] have, but honestly, in my life, because it's in the arts, I don't go to work every day. So my day has been more flexible than other working women, even when I was young and broke. I was only ever working for four months at a time and then I was unemployed. So my children never knew when I was going to be home, which was very valuable [laughs]. It was a struggle. Women have to do it all.

On how it feels to have won three times: I read a poem yesterday, and it had nothing to do with this, but one of the lines jumped out, and it said "It's as strange to be here once as it is to return." So that's true. The whole thing is strange. If you're a human being, it's weird. If you're not, I don't know. Probably fine.

On if she worried that she'd never win again: No. I have everything I've ever dreamed of in my life. I think there's room for other people, and frankly, I understand Streep fatigue. And it shocked me that it didn't override this tonight. I was really, really happy but I don't take anything for granted, that's for sure.

On advice for young women: Never give up, don't give up, don't vie up. Many girls around the world live in circumstances that are unimaginably different. Show business is a golf game compared to the way most kids grow up in the world. But I would say never give up.

On how it felt to see herself as Margaret Thatcher: By the time we had achieved the right amount of less and less and less, I had become acclimated to not looking at Margaret Thatcher in the mirror, I thought it was me. And that was important to me, that I wasn't looking at rubber, that I wasn't looking at me. At that point in creating that character, I had already morphed, in a way, in my head and in my heart with her. And her concerns, and her interests, her zeal, her mission, her sense of rightness, and all that. But honestly, when we first had the old-age makeup on, I saw my dad. Maybe my dad looked like Margaret Thatcher.