Kate Winslet - Best Actress?
And 2009 looks set to be a tough year for all who find themselves in that category, but there is a serious chance that a Brit actress will take home the trophy. FemaleFirst takes a closer look at the nominations.
Angelina Jolie - Changeling
Angelina Jolie was the first of the high profile actresses to stake her claim for the Oscar with Clint Eastwood's Changeling. However she has been somewhat overshadowed by others on the awards circuit and a performance that would normally have earnt a sting of gongs really has been overlooked.
In a working-class suburb, single mother Christine Collins (Jolie) says goodbye to her nine-year-old son, Walter, and leaves for her job as a telephone operator. But when Christine returns to their modest home, she is confronted with every parent’s worst nightmare: Her son has vanished.
Five months later, when a child, claiming to be her boy, is returned by police who are eager to bask in the public-relations coup of reuniting mother and child. Dazed by the swirl of cops, reporters, photographers and her own conflicted emotions, Christine is persuaded to take the boy home. But in her heart, she knows he is not Walter.
As she pushes authorities to keep looking for her real son, Christine learns that in Prohibition-era L.A., women don’t challenge the system and live to tell their story as slandered as delusional and unfit.
Facing corrupt police who question her sanity and a skeptical public hungry for a fairy-tale ending, Christine desperately hunts for answers. As she searches, she becomes an unlikely heroine for the poor and downtrodden who have been systematically abused and swept aside by the police state that has gripped L.A.
Kristen Scott Thomas - I've Loved You So Long
Kristen Scott Thomas is the first of the British actresses that is looking for success in Bafta night after winning the best European Actress award for her role as well as landing a Golden Globe nomination for her performance.
Léa (Elsa Zylberstein) and Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas) are sisters. Juliette has just been released from prison after serving a long sentence. Léa was still a teenager when Juliette, a doctor, was convicted of the murder of her six-year-old son.
Life together isn’t easy to begin with. Juliette has to relearn certain basics. The world has moved on and she often seems confused. Although she may seem cold and distant, her attitude stems more from her being ill at ease.
Helped by some, such as the kindly but tactless social worker and her open-hearted but depressed parole officer (Frédéric Pierrot) whose confidante she becomes, Juliette is also rejected by others, particularly employers who throw her out as soon as they find out what she did.
But a huge question hangs over Juliette's renaissance. Why did she do such a terrible thing fifteen years ago? For all the others, it's a recurrent thought that they dare not put into words. And for Juliette, locked away in her secret, it's a burden to bear, which holds her back from engaging in her life and believing that she too has the right to be happy.
Meryl Streep - Doubt
it's been award nomination crazy for Meryl Streep, as you would imagine for an actress that can't appear to do anything wrong, for her role as Sister Aloysius in Doubt.
It's 1964, St. Nicholas in the Bronx. A vibrant, charismatic priest, Father Flynn, is trying to upend the school's strict customs, which have long been fiercely guarded by Sister Aloysius Beauvier, the iron-gloved Principal who believes in the power of fear and discipline.
The winds of political change are sweeping through the country, and, indeed, the school has just accepted its first black student,
Donald Miller. But when Sister James, a hopeful innocent, shares with Sister Aloysius her suspicion that Father Flynn is paying too much personal attention to Donald, Sister Aloysius is galvanized to begin a crusade to both unearth the truth and expunge Flynn from the school.
Now, without a shred of proof or evidence except her moral certainty, Sister Aloysius locks into a battle of wills with Father Flynn, a battle that threatens to tear apart the Church and school with devastating consequences.
Kate Winslet - The Reader
After doing the double at the Golden Globes for Best Actress and best Supporting Actress she is the favourite to scoop Best Actress with two nominations.
When he falls ill on his way home from school, 15 year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna (Kate Winslet), a woman twice his age.
The two begin an unexpected and passionate affair only for Hanna to suddenly and inexplicably disappear. Eight years later, Michael, now a young law student observing Nazi war trials, meets his former lover again, under very different circumstances.
Hanna is on trial for a hideous crime, and as she refuses to defend herself, Michael gradually realizes his boyhood love may be guarding a secret she considers to be more shameful than murder.
Kate Winslet - Revolutionary Road
Her second nomination is for her performance in Stephen Daldry's Revolutionary Road, which reunited her with Leonardo DiCaprio.
Frank and April have always seen themselves as special, different, ready and willing to live their lives based on higher ideals.
So, as soon as they move into their new house on Revolutionary Road, they proudly declare their independence from the suburban inertia that surrounds them and determine never to be trapped by the social confines of their era.
Yet for all their charm, beauty and irreverence, the Wheelers find themselves becoming exactly what they didn’t expect: a good man with a meaningless job whose nerve has gone missing; a less-than-happy homemaker starving for fulfillment and passion; an American family with lost dreams, like any other.
Driven to change their fates, April hatches an audacious plan to start all over again, to leave the comforts of Connecticut behind for the great unknown of Paris.
But when the plan is put in motion, each spouse is pushed to extremes one to escape whatever the cost, the other to save all that they have, no matter the compromises.
The winners are announced 8th February
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
And 2009 looks set to be a tough year for all who find themselves in that category, but there is a serious chance that a Brit actress will take home the trophy. FemaleFirst takes a closer look at the nominations.
Angelina Jolie - Changeling
Angelina Jolie was the first of the high profile actresses to stake her claim for the Oscar with Clint Eastwood's Changeling. However she has been somewhat overshadowed by others on the awards circuit and a performance that would normally have earnt a sting of gongs really has been overlooked.
In a working-class suburb, single mother Christine Collins (Jolie) says goodbye to her nine-year-old son, Walter, and leaves for her job as a telephone operator. But when Christine returns to their modest home, she is confronted with every parent’s worst nightmare: Her son has vanished.
Five months later, when a child, claiming to be her boy, is returned by police who are eager to bask in the public-relations coup of reuniting mother and child. Dazed by the swirl of cops, reporters, photographers and her own conflicted emotions, Christine is persuaded to take the boy home. But in her heart, she knows he is not Walter.
As she pushes authorities to keep looking for her real son, Christine learns that in Prohibition-era L.A., women don’t challenge the system and live to tell their story as slandered as delusional and unfit.
Facing corrupt police who question her sanity and a skeptical public hungry for a fairy-tale ending, Christine desperately hunts for answers. As she searches, she becomes an unlikely heroine for the poor and downtrodden who have been systematically abused and swept aside by the police state that has gripped L.A.
Kristen Scott Thomas - I've Loved You So Long
Kristen Scott Thomas is the first of the British actresses that is looking for success in Bafta night after winning the best European Actress award for her role as well as landing a Golden Globe nomination for her performance.
Léa (Elsa Zylberstein) and Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas) are sisters. Juliette has just been released from prison after serving a long sentence. Léa was still a teenager when Juliette, a doctor, was convicted of the murder of her six-year-old son.
Life together isn’t easy to begin with. Juliette has to relearn certain basics. The world has moved on and she often seems confused. Although she may seem cold and distant, her attitude stems more from her being ill at ease.
Helped by some, such as the kindly but tactless social worker and her open-hearted but depressed parole officer (Frédéric Pierrot) whose confidante she becomes, Juliette is also rejected by others, particularly employers who throw her out as soon as they find out what she did.
But a huge question hangs over Juliette's renaissance. Why did she do such a terrible thing fifteen years ago? For all the others, it's a recurrent thought that they dare not put into words. And for Juliette, locked away in her secret, it's a burden to bear, which holds her back from engaging in her life and believing that she too has the right to be happy.
Meryl Streep - Doubt
it's been award nomination crazy for Meryl Streep, as you would imagine for an actress that can't appear to do anything wrong, for her role as Sister Aloysius in Doubt.
It's 1964, St. Nicholas in the Bronx. A vibrant, charismatic priest, Father Flynn, is trying to upend the school's strict customs, which have long been fiercely guarded by Sister Aloysius Beauvier, the iron-gloved Principal who believes in the power of fear and discipline.
The winds of political change are sweeping through the country, and, indeed, the school has just accepted its first black student,
Donald Miller. But when Sister James, a hopeful innocent, shares with Sister Aloysius her suspicion that Father Flynn is paying too much personal attention to Donald, Sister Aloysius is galvanized to begin a crusade to both unearth the truth and expunge Flynn from the school.
Now, without a shred of proof or evidence except her moral certainty, Sister Aloysius locks into a battle of wills with Father Flynn, a battle that threatens to tear apart the Church and school with devastating consequences.
Kate Winslet - The Reader
After doing the double at the Golden Globes for Best Actress and best Supporting Actress she is the favourite to scoop Best Actress with two nominations.
Tagged in Baftas