Rachel Weisz prize for Streetcar

Rachel Weisz has taken top acting honours and Ian McKellen has been recognised for a half-century in the theatre at London's Evening Standard Theatre Awards

Weisz won the acting prize for playing faded southern belle Blanche Dubois in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. The prize was renamed the Natasha Richardson Best Actress Award this year in honour of the actress who died in March after a skiing accident in Quebec.

The award was presented by Richardson's mother, Vanessa Redgrave.

Weisz said it was an honour to receive a prize named for "the great and much, much-loved Natasha Richardson". She spoke from Romania, where she is filming Bosnia-set drama The Whistlebower.