THE pregnancy comedy “Juno” was chosen as this year’s best independent film and won two other honors Saturday at the Spirit Awards, including best actress for Ellen Page.

The ceremony was a warm-up for Hollywood’s big show, Academy Awards, where “Juno” and Page are in the running for the same categories. Page gushed thanks for “Juno” director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody.

“This is so, so special, but this is pretty much all Diablo Cody’s fault,” said Page, who played a whipsmart pregnant teen giving the baby up for adoption in “Juno.” “She wrote one of the best screenplays I have ever read and created a teenage female lead I feel like we’ve never seen before.”

Cody won the award for best first screenplay and is up for original screenplay at the Oscars.

Reitman missed out on the directing award, which went to Julian Schnabel for “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” based on the memoir of French Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffered a paralyzing stroke. The film also won the cinematography prize for Janusz Kaminski.

Both Reitman and Schnabel are nominated for best director at the Oscars. Most key Spirit Award recipients had Oscar nominations.

And keeping the spirit of pregnancy in the air, Angelina Jolie, nominated for best actress for “A Mighty Heart,” a role for which she was denied an Oscar nod, showed up looking clearly pregnant with her partner Brad Pitt.

Moments of the ceremony were a tribute to Heath Ledger, who died of a prescription drug overdose Jan. 22 at his Manhattan apartment.

One of six actors playing incarnations of Bob Dylan in director Todd Haynes’ “I’m Not There,” Ledger was remembered as “probably one of the most beautiful independent spirits of all” by Cate Blanchett, winner of the supporting-actress prize for portraying Dylan in his transition from folk icon to electric rocker, a role that also earned her an Oscar nomination.

Chiwetel Ejiofor won supporting actor as a radio station manager signing up an ex-con who becomes an outspoken on-air activist amid the 1960s civil-rights movement in “Talk to Me.” (SD-Agencies)