Robert De Niro, Carey Mulligan and Will Smith were among the big winners at the first major ceremony of the film awards season.
De Niro was presented with the Hollywood Career Achievement Award at the 19th annual Hollywood Film Awards in Beverly Hills.
Mulligan was given the Hollywood Actress Award for her role in Suffragette and Smith took home the Hollywood Actor Award for his portrayal of a doctor in new film Concussion, about the discovery of brain trauma in a professional American football player.
The ceremony marks the start of a long run of awards shows in Los Angeles leading up to the Oscars on February 28, 2016, including the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
The ceremony celebrates many films which are not yet on general release but are expected to feature prominently in the awards race.
The winners are all announced in advance and the ceremony is not televised.
British director Tom Hooper, who is responsible for The King's Speech and Les Miserables, was given the Hollywood Director Award for his new movie The Danish Girl, which stars Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne as a transgender pioneer in the 1920s.
Redmayne's co-star Alicia Vikander was presented with the Hollywood Breakout Actress Film for her role as his wife.
Speaking on the red carpet at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, the Swedish actress said: "I've only been in this room once before in my life and that was three years ago at the Golden Globes with a foreign film.
"I thought it was an experience I could tell my grandkids about, that I went to this Hollywood awards thing and saw all these people I looked up to and admired.
"I never thought I would work with some of the directors and actors that I met here and to be back is extraordinary."
The Hollywood Breakout Actor Award was given to Australian star Joel Edgerton for his performance as a corrupt FBI agent in Black Mass.
Irish actress Saoirse Ronan won the New Hollywood Award for her performance in Brooklyn, a film about a young woman leaving her small town in Ireland to move to New York in the 1950s.
And Trainwreck's Amy Schumer took home the Hollywood Comedy Award for the film she wrote and starred in.
Jane Fonda was given the Hollywood Supporting Actress prize for her role in new film Youth and Benicio Del Toro took the Hollywood Supporting Actor Award for drugs thriller Sicario.
Thelma And Louise director Ridley Scott was named Hollywood Producer for his blockbuster hit The Martian, which he also directed.
There were also gongs for the cast of Furious 7, which was named Hollywood Blockbuster, the actors in Straight Outta Compton, who were given the Hollywood Breakout Ensemble Award, and the stars of Quentin Tarantino's highly anticipated new film The Hateful Eight, which won The Hollywood Ensemble Award.
Asif Kapadia's moving documentary about singer Amy Winehouse, named Amy, won the Hollywood Documentary Award, while Disney Pixar's Inside Out won the Hollywood Animation Award.