Casey Affleck - Gone Baby Gone Javier Bardem - No Country For Old Men Hal Holbrook - Into The Wild Philip Seymour Hoffman - Charlie Wilson’s War Tom Wilkinson - Michael Clayton

Casey Affleck
It has been a great year for Casey Affleck who is finally escaping from the shadow of his brother Ben.Gone Baby Gone is Ben Affleck’s debut film as a director and has been receiving rave reviews. However the film was shelved here in the UK because of a resemblance to the Madeline McCann story and a release date has not been finalised.Gone Baby Gone is based on the novel by Dennis Lehane which has been adapted by Ben Affleck in his directorial debut.Set in Boston in a neighbourhood of Dorchester four year old Amanda McCready has disappeared without a trace.

The child's aunt and uncle plead with local private investigators Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Genano (Michelle Monaghan) to take on the case.

The pair, who know the city well, dig into the child's past discovering a drug-addicted mother, ex-cons, child abuse and drug dealers but this brings them no nearer to finding Amanda.

They join forces with detective Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) and police captain Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman) and together they discover the sad truth of Amanda's fate.

But Patrick can't walk away from the case and goes back over the clues finding himself being driven into a web of lies and violence which leaves him facing a moral dilemma.

Under his brother's direction Casey gives a truly breakthrough and great performance, which he went on to follow up with his role as Robert Ford in the Assassination of Jesse James with Brad Pitt.

Casey went on to win Best Breakthrough Actor of the Year at the Hollywood Film Festival.

Javier Bardem

Spanish thespian Javier Bardem is whipping up a storm for his role as psychopathic killer Anton Chigurh in the Coen brothers' No Country For Old Men.

No Country For Old Men is receiving a string of rave reviews as one of the best Coen movies and a great performance by Bardem.

The story begins when Llewelyn Moss (Brolin) finds a pickup truck surrounded by dead me and a load of heroin and two million dollars in cash still in the back.

When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell (Jones) can contain.

As Moss tries to evade his pursuers in particular a mysterious mastermind who flips coins for human lives (Bardem) the film simultaneously strips down the American crime drama and broadens its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as bloodily contemporary as this morning’s headlines.

Bardem's role is the most chilling villain that will be on screens in the new year and he is widely tipped for an Oscar nomination and a possible win.

Bardem was the first Spanish actor to receive an Academy Award nomination for his Role in Before Night Falls in 2000.

No Country For Old Men was Bardem's second role of the year after starring in Love in the Time of Cholera.

Hal Holbrook

Hal Holbrook is a surprise nomination in this category with Best Supporting Actor expected to go to William Hurt.

Freshly graduated from college with a promising future, 22 year-old Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch) instead walked out of his privileged life and into the wild in search of adventure.

What happened to him on the way transformed this young wanderer into an enduring symbol for countless people.

Was Christopher McCandless a heroic adventurer or a naïve idealist, a rebellious 1990s Thoreau or another lost American son, a fearless risk-taker or a tragic figure who wrestled with the precarious balance between man and nature?

Sean Penn's Into The Wild has been one of the most popular movie with the critics since its release and did well, in terms of nominations, at Screen Actors Guild Awards and the Chicago Film Critics Association Awards.

However it was a shock when the Golden Globe nomination were revealed and Into The Wild was not nominated for Best Picture, actor or director.

Philip Seymour Hoffman

Philip Seymour Hoffman is the only actor or actress to be nominated in two categories after being given the nod in Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his role in The Savages his role in Charlie Wilson's War is also recognised.

Seymour Hoffman goes into 2008 after a great 2007 that has cemented him as a great actor after his Oscar win for Capote in 2006.

With films Before the Devil Knows Your Dead and The Savages it is perhaps Charlie Wilson's War that he will be recognised most for.

Charlie Wilson's War is the true story of how a playboy congressman, a renegade CIA agent and a beautiful Houston socialite joined forces to lead the largest and most successful covert operation in history.

Their efforts contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, with consequences that reverberate throughout the world today.

As the renegade CIA officer Hoffman is supported by Oscar Winner Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts as well as Oscar nominee Amy Adams.

With award season only a stones throw away and three great films to his credit it's difficult to decide which he should be recognised for as all are great performances worthy of a win.

Tom Wilkinson

Tom Wilkinson is the third actor to be nominated for their roles in the critically acclaimed Michael Clayton.

British actor Wilkinson follows in the footsteps of George Clooney and Tilda Swinton bagging a nomination for his role of Arthur Edens, who is in the middle of a breakdown.

Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is an in-house fixer at one of the largest corporate law firms in New York.

At the behest of the firm’s co-founder Marty Bach (Sydney Pollack), Clayton, a former prosecutor from a family of cops, takes care of Kenner, Bach & Ledeen’s dirtiest work.

Clayton cleans up clients’ messes, handling anything from hit-and-runs and damaging stories in the press to shoplifting wives and crooked politicians.

Though burned out and discontented in his job, Clayton is inextricably tied to Kenner, Bach & Ledeen; a divorce, gambling habit, and a failed business venture have left him with mounting debt.

At the agrichemical company U/North, the career of in-house counsel chief Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton) rests on the multi-million dollar settlement of a class action suit that Clayton’s firm is leading to a seemingly successful conclusion.

When Kenner, Bach & Ledeen’s top litigator, the brilliant Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), has an apparent breakdown and subsequently tries to sabotage the entire U/North case, Michael Clayton is sent to tackle this unprecedented disaster and in doing so comes face to face with the reality of who he has become.

Wilkinson OBE has been one of Britain’s most successful actors making his mark in British movie Full Monty before going on to appear a string of Hollywood movies.

He received an Academy Award for Best Actor in 2001 for his role in In The Bedroom. Since then he appeared in Batman Begins, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Last Kiss and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

He will next be seen in Cassandra's Dream with Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor and Valkyrie with Tom Cruise.

Tip to win Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture is - Javier Bardem.

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw