-George Clooney - Michael Clayton

-Daniel Day-Lewis - There Will Be Blood

-James McAvoy - Atonement

-Viggo Mortensen - Eastern Promises

-Ulrich Muehe - The Lives of Others

Daniel Day Lewis

British actor Daniel Day Lewis is picking up awards left, right and centre for his role as Daniel Plainview in Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood.After scooping the Golden Globe and the more recent Screen Actors Guild award he is now red hot favourite to win the Oscar after securing a nomination.Set over a twenty year period the Will Be Blood follows Daniel Plainview (Day Lewis), who rises from a lowly silver miner to become a successful oil baron. Following a tip from a visitor named Paul Sunday, whose family sits atop a veritable ocean of oil, Plainview travels to the town of New Boston, California, with his young son. Sunday’s preacher brother Eli (both roles are played by the excellent Paul Dano) grudgingly accepts Plainview’s ambitions under the condition that he help fund the town church.

As Plainview’s plans come to fruition, a series of events begin to fracture the insular world he has constructed for himself, pitting Plainview against Sunday and forcing him to become even more vindictive and ruthless.

Daniel Day Lewis is one of the finest actors ever produced by this country and starred in the ground-breaking movie My Beautiful Laundrette and won an Oscar for his role in My Left Foot.

James McAvoy

James McAvoy is the second, and the youngest, of the British actors to be nominated in this category.

Despite British audiences being familiar with McAvoy and his talent for some time 2007 has been his breakthrough year in America.

It began with his turn in The Last King of Scotland which landed him a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor and co-star Forest Whitaker bagging the Best Actor Oscar in February.

He followed this up with Joe Wright’s beautiful adaptation of Ian McEwan’s Atonement which has really grabbed the audience’s attention.

He plays Robbie Turner who is parted from his lover Cecilia after he is wrongfully accused of rape by her younger sister.

After spending time in prison he is drafted into the army to fight in the Second World War and finds himself on the beaches of Dunkirk.

He will next be seen in Wanted alongside Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman.

George Clooney

Like Day Lewis, George Clooney is also becoming a regular in awards season's nominations.

His role as Michael Clayton has earnt Clooney critical acclaim as well as a whole host of critic's awards including San Francisco film Critics Circle and national Board of Review for Best Actor.

After a stint behind the camera for Good Night and Good Luck he returns as just an actor for Michael Clayton, only as an actor, as a burnt out lawyer and professional ‘fixer’ who gets caught up in events that surround a corporate cover up.

This nomination follows his Oscar success in 2006 when he was nominated for Best Director and Original Screenplay for Good Night and Good Luck and Best supporting Actor for Syrianna. He went on to win for his role in Syrianna.

But george will step behind the camera again later this year with Leatherheads, which he will also star in.

Viggo Mortensen

Mortensen is at last beginning to shake off his Lord of the Rings tag forming an excellent partnership with director David Cronenberg.

In their second feature together Eastern Promises follows Nikolai, a ruthless and dangerous man who is linked to one of London’s most nortorious and organised crime families.

But his careful existence is disrupted by Anna, a midwife, who is searching for the family of a girl who died in childbirth.

Mortensen is famed for his deep research when preparing for his roles and for Eastern Promises he mingled with some of the Russian Mafia in London.

Eastern Promises won the Audience Prize at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this year.

Ulrich Muehe

Ulrich Muehe is the least well known of the actors in this category and a very surprising entry, given the fact that this film won an Oscar last year so should have been included in last year's BAFTA nominations.

East Berlin, November 1984. Five years before its downfall, the former East-German government ensured its claim to power with a ruthless system of control and surveillance.

Party-loyalist Captain Gerd Wiesler hopes to boost his career when given the job of collecting evidence against the playwright Georg Dreyman and his girlfriend, the celebrated theater actress Christa-Maria Sieland.

After all, the "operation" is backed by the highest political circles. What he didn't anticipate, however, was that submerging oneself into the world of the target also changes the surveillance agent.

The immersion in the lives of others--in love, literature, free thinking and speech--makes Wiesler acutely aware of the meagerness of his own existence and opens to him a completely new way of life which he has ever more trouble resisting.

But the system, once started, cannot be stopped. A dangerous game has begun.

Tip to win BAFTA's Best Actor - Daniel Day Lewis

FemaleFirst Helen Earnhaw