NEW YORK (AP) — The wait is finally over: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Hollywood’s reigning royal couple, have tied the knot.

Despite two years of feverish scrutiny, the pair managed to keep one of the world’s most anticipated weddings shrouded from the media’s glare.

When? Where? Why haven’t they yet? Did they already? The celebrity press and ‘Brangelina’ fans alike had been consumed with the matrimonial mystery.

Then yesterday, a spokesman for the couple quietly confirmed to The Associated Press that Hollywood’s undisputed royal couple had wed Saturday in a private ceremony in Southern France.

Jolie and Pitt exchanged vows in a small chapel at the Chateau Miraval in the Provence hamlet of Correns. Since 2008, Miraval has been their Southern France home, a sprawling estate they bought three years ago.

The union was less a vow of commitment than the official affirmation of one made long ago. Pitt and Jolie have been together nearly a decade and have six children, all of whom participated in the wedding.

The wedding may have been cloaked in secrecy, but Pitt and Jolie are preparing to be a big presence at the movies this fall. Pitt stars in the upcoming World War II drama Fury, due out October 17. Jolie’s second directorial effort, the World War II odyssey Unbroken, will be released in December.

On Thursday, Pitt was far from any honeymoon hideaway. Instead, he was at the Bovington Tank Museum in Dorset, UK, promoting Fury.

Both movies could be major players in Hollywood’s award season, which last year was dominated by a film produced by Pitt, the best picture-winning historical drama 12 Years a Slave.

At Saturday’s ceremony, Jolie walked the aisle with her eldest sons, 13-year-old Maddox and 10-year-old Pax. Daughters Zahara, 9, and Vivienne, 6, threw flower petals. Eight-year-old Shiloh and Knox, 6, served as ring bearers, the couple’s spokesman said.

In advance of the nondenominational civil ceremony, Pitt and Jolie obtained a marriage license from a local California judge. The judge also conducted the ceremony in France.

Pitt once said that he didn’t want to marry until gay marriage was legal everywhere, but in recent years, the couple had said publicly they intended to. They were engaged in early 2012 after some seven years together.

This is the second marriage for Pitt, who wed Jennifer Aniston in 2000. They divorced in 2005.

Jolie was previously married to British actor Jonny Lee Miller for three years in the late 1990s and to Billy Bob Thornton for three years before divorcing in 2003. Jolie has said she and Pitt fell in love while making the 2005 film Mr & Mrs Smith.

Movie academy to honor Belafonte, O’Hara

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Harry Belafonte and Maureen O’Hara are among those who will be honored by the motion picture academy’s board of governors.

The academy said yesterday that Belafonte will receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the academy’s sixth annual Governors Awards on Nov. 8 in Los Angeles.

Actor-singer Belafonte, 87, is being recognised for his dedication to shedding light on racism and inequality worldwide, the academy said.

Actress O’Hara, 94, whose films include The Quiet Man, will join artist and animated filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere in receiving honorary Academy Award statuettes for lifetime achievement.

Officials: Joan Rivers rushed to hospital

NEW YORK (AP) — Joan Rivers is in a New York City hospital yesterday after she was rushed from a doctor’s office when she went into cardiac arrest, police and hospital officials said.

The 81-year-old comedian’s condition wasn’t immediately known.

“This morning, Joan Rivers was taken to The Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, where she is being attended to. Her family wants to thank everybody for their outpouring of love and support,” said Sid Dinsay, a spokesman for Mount Sinai Hospital. “We will provide an update on her condition as it becomes available.”

New York City police officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorised to publicly name Rivers, said she was taken to the hospital just after 9:30 am yesterday.

Rivers’ representatives didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The entertainer has logged a half-century in show business. Rivers was scheduled to perform a show Friday at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, New Jersey. The theater announced Thursday that the show was being postponed but that tickets would be honored when it is rescheduled.

Rivers hosts Fashion Police on E! network and co-stars with her daughter, Melissa, on the WEtv reality show, Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best? She also presides over an online talk show, In Bed With Joan.

Her latest book, Diary of a Mad Diva, was released this summer.

In 2009, Rivers emerged as the winner of NBC’s The Celebrity Apprentice. A documentary, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, premiered in theaters in 2010.

Rivers coined the phrase ‘Can we talk?’ in her standup routines and, interviewing fashionistas on the red carpet, introduced the question, ‘Who are you wearing?’

A native of New York, Rivers originally entered show business with the dream of a theatrical career, but comedy became a way to pay the bills while she auditioned for acting roles.