Oscars 2017 Live Mahershala Ali takes home first gong

Oscars 2017 Live Mahershala Ali takes home first gong

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Mahershala Ali took home the very first award of the night at the 89th Annual Academy Awards.

The 43-year-old actor took home the gong for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Moonlight at the event held at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood on Sunday night.

The Oakland, California-native made sure to button up his tuxedo as he said his grandmother would tell him to do so.



It was kicked off by an entertaining performance by Justin Timberlake as he did his Trolls hit Can't Stop The Feeling.  

Then came out host Jimmy Kimmel and starts immediately joking about the state of the US before poking fun at Mel Gibson and saying he's going to bury the hatchet with Matt Damon.

The annual awards ceremony hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognizes excellence in cinematic achievements in the film industry as assessed by the Academy's voting membership.

Romantic showbiz musical La La Land topped the Oscars nominations list with a whopping 14 nods.

The number ties the record set by Titanic and All About Eve and has a chance to beat the record 11 Oscars that have been won by Ben-Hur, Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Its 10 other nominations came in nine categories.



After last year's #OscarsSoWhite controversy, seven of the 20 actors nominated for awards are non-white.

Industry pundits had predicted that a number of black actors and filmmakers would be recognized this year, after calls for a boycott erupted last year when no black actors were among the 20 nominees in the main acting categories.

In a bid to address the issue, the Academy subsequently named nearly 700 new members, almost half of them women and nearly as many people of color.



The Academy's board of governors has vowed to double the number of female and ethnic minority members by 2020.

Nighttime talk show funnyman Jimmy Kimmel hosts Hollywood's glitziest ceremony this year.

Ahead of the awards Kimmel told USA Today that he's promising humor and respect.

'I think I have a pretty good sense this is not the Comedy Central Roast,' he joked.



'That’s not to say I won’t be making fun of people and things. I will but I do recognize for a lot of people this is the biggest night of their professional lives and the last thing I want to do is ruin it for someone.

The 49-year-old admitted that he was feeling the pressure to do well.

'It’s one thing to bomb on a Wednesday night in front of three million people,' he said. 'But it’s another thing entirely to bomb at the Oscars. It stays with you your whole life.'