Held at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center, the "Black Swan" beauty garnered plenty of attention as she charmed her way down the red carpet alongside fiance Benjamin Millepied.
During the course of the night, Natalie - who won Best Actress the previous year - is set to take the stage to hand out one of the coveted trophies while other presenters include Angelina Jolie, Tom Cruise, Jennifer Lopez and Cameron Diaz.
With "Hugo" leading the pack at 11 nominations while "The Artist" sits close behind at 10 chances for Oscar glory, the 2012 Academy Awards will be hosted by Billy Crystal and will broadcast live on ABC on Sunday, February 26th beginning at 7 ET.
After an eight-year absence, host Billy Crystal — back for his ninth time as host — kicked off the The 84th Academy Awards show in Los Angeles.
Best actor nominees George Clooney and Jean Dujardin hit the Academy Award red carpet Sunday night to the delight of fans in the bleachers outside the Hollywood & Highland Center, the first group of A-listers to arrive for the ceremony under a glorious California sky.
Dujardin hopes to become the first Frenchman to win best actor and his The Artist is favored to become the only silent movie to take the best-picture prize since the first Oscar ceremony 83 years ago.
Christopher Plummer is in line to become the oldest acting winner ever at 82. Meryl Streep might join the acting three-peat club with a third Academy Award.
Along with Streep, Hollywood's big night on Sunday has plenty of returning stars, too, with past Oscar winners and nominees such as Clooney, Brad Pitt, Glenn Close, Michelle Williams and Nick Nolte in the running again.
Because of a change in voting rules, the Oscars feature nine best-picture nominees for the first time, instead of the 10 they had the last two years.
Competing against The Artist for the top honor are Clooney's family drama The Descendants; the Deep South tale The Help, featuring best-actress nominee Viola Davis and supporting-actress favorite Octavia Spencer; and the Paris adventure Hugo, from director Martin Scorsese.
Also in the lineup: the romantic fantasy Midnight in Paris, from writer-director Woody Allen; Pitt's baseball tale Moneyball and his family saga The Tree of Life; the World War I epic War Horse, directed by Steven Spielberg; and Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock's Sept. 11 story Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.
Hugo leads with 11 nominations, with "The Artist" right behind with 10.
Spencer's a virtual lock for supporting actress, having dominated earlier film honors for her breakout role in The Help as a brash maid in 1960s Mississippi. The same holds true for Plummer, the front-runner for supporting actor for his role as an elderly widower who comes out as gay in Beginners.
The lead-acting categories are where the drama lies. Best actress shapes up as a two-woman race between Davis as a courageous maid leading an effort to reveal the hardships of black housekeepers' lives in The Help and Streep as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady.
The record-holder with 17 acting nominations, Streep has won twice and would become only the fifth performer to receive three Oscars. Jack Nicholson, Ingrid Bergman and Walter Brennan all earned three, while Katharine Hepburn won four.
It's been almost three decades since Streep last received an Oscar, for 1982's Sophie's Choice. Though she has the most acting nominations, she also has the most losses —14. Another loss would be her 13th in a row.
Best actor also looks like a two-person contest between Clooney as the distressed patriarch of a Hawaiian clan in The Descendants and Dujardin as a silent-era superstar whose career tanks as talking pictures take over in The Artist.
It would be the second Oscar for Clooney, who won the supporting-actor prize for 2005's Syriana. While French actresses have won before, among them Marion Cotillard and Juliette Binoche, Dujardin would be the first actor from France to receive an Oscar.
Dujardin was picked as best actor Saturday at the Spirit Awards honoring independent film, where The Artist ruled with four prizes, including best picture and director for Michel Hazanavicius, who is favored for the same trophy at the Oscars.
The Artist has dominated Hollywood honors this season, winning key prizes at the Golden Globes and awards shows held by the Directors, Producers and Screen Actors guilds.
"This means a lot, because it's a small movie. It's not expensive. We did it with small money," Hazanavicius said backstage at the Spirit Awards. "And it's black and white and silent."
If The Artist comes away with the best-picture trophy, it would be the first win for a silent film since the war story Wings was named outstanding picture at the inaugural Oscars in 1929.
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