2007
The winner is listed first, in CAPITAL letters.
Filmsite's Greatest Films
of 2007
Best Picture
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/filmfotos/nocountryforoldmen_title.jpg)
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/screens/atonement.jpg)
Atonement (2007, US/UK)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/titles/juno-title.jpg)
Juno (2007)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/screens/michaelclayton.jpg)
Michael Clayton (2007)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/titles/therewillbeblood-title.jpg)
There Will Be Blood (2007)
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Best Animated Feature Film
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/titles/ratatouille-pixar.jpg)
RATATOUILLE (2007)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/screens/persepolis.jpg)
Persepolis (2007, Iran/Fr.)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/screens/surfsup.jpg)
Surf's Up (2007)
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Actor:
DANIEL DAY-LEWIS in "There Will Be Blood," George Clooney
in "Michael Clayton," Johnny Depp in "Sweeney
Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street," Tommy Lee Jones
in "In the Valley of Elah," Viggo Mortensen in "Eastern
Promises"
Actress:
MARION COTILLARD in "La Vie en Rose," Cate Blanchett
in "Elizabeth: The Golden Age," Julie Christie in "Away
From Her," Laura Linney in "The Savages," Ellen
Page in "Juno"
Supporting Actor:
JAVIER BARDEM in "No Country for Old Men," Casey Affleck
in "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert
Ford," Hal Holbrook in "Into the Wild," Philip
Seymour Hoffman in "Charlie Wilson's War," Tom Wilkinson
in "Michael Clayton"
Supporting Actress:
TILDA SWINTON in "Michael Clayton," Cate Blanchett
in "I'm Not There," Ruby Dee in "American Gangster," Saoirse
Ronan in "Atonement," Amy Ryan in "Gone Baby
Gone"
Director:
JOEL COEN AND ETHAN COEN for "No Country for Old Men," Julian
Schnabel for "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," Jason
Reitman for "Juno," Tony Gilroy for "Michael
Clayton," Paul Thomas Anderson for "There Will Be
Blood"
The
pesky, long-running writer's strike ended approximately two
weeks before the Oscar ceremony (the 80th annual show), ending
speculation about whether there would be an awards ceremony
or not.
The most profitable box-office blockbusters of
2007 were not well represented or were conspicuously missing
in the lists of nominees and winners, such as Spider-Man
3, Shrek the Third, Pirates
of the Caribbean: At World's End (with two nominations), Harry
Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Transformers (with
three nominations), I Am Legend, National Treasure:
Book of Secrets, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and The
Simpsons Movie. The immensely successful The
Bourne Ultimatum from director Paul Greengrass, the
third film in the thriller Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) trilogy,
was an exception: it received three Oscar wins from its three
nominations in technical categories (with wins for Best Sound
Mixing, Best Sound Editing, and Best Film Editing).
This marked the third consecutive year in which
the Best Picture-nominated films were not big-budget studio
pictures, and there were no obvious frontrunners, although No
Country For Old Men had the edge. Nominees were mostly
financed by outsiders and released by specialty divisions,
meaning that they were artistic, creative and daring modestly-budgeted
films from maverick film directors, for the most part. All
five films were made for budgets of $30 million or less, about
a third of the cost for a normal studio production (and Juno cost
only $2.5 million!). Four of the five nominees for the top
prize were films released by studio specialty divisions. [Note:
the one exception was Michael Clayton, which was released
by Warner Bros., but financed and bankrolled by a private individual.]
- No Country for Old Men, from Walt Disney
Co.'s Miramax and Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Vantage
- There Will Be Blood, also from Miramax
and Paramount Vantage
- Atonement, from General Electric Co.'s
Focus Features
- Michael Clayton, from Time Warner Inc.'s
Warner Bros.
- Juno, from News Corp.'s Fox Searchlight
Two Best Picture nominees had eight nominations
apiece (both were American productions), and two had seven
nominations apiece. The two nominees with the most nominations
picked up multiple awards. Of the five bleak-themed nominees,
there was only one feel-good comedy (an independent film which
had the largest box-office of the films at the time of the
nominations' announcement and after the awards were presented,
and became Fox Searchlight's top-grossing movie of all time).
The winning Best Picture marked the fourth consecutive
year in which a film set in modern times won the top prize
- a first for the Oscars!
The Best Picture winner was the
Coen Brothers' 12th film, the violent thriller-drama and contemporary
western chase movie No Country for Old Men (with eight
nominations, including four wins for Best Picture, Best Director,
Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor), an adaptation
of Cormac McCarthy's novel about a hunter (Josh Brolin) who
stole cash from a bad drug deal and then was relentlessly pursued.
Its tagline was: "There Are No Clean Getaways." It was the
Coen's first film based entirely on a novel.
[Note: the Coen Brothers directly received four of
the eight nominations and three wins - for Best Picture (win),
Best Director (win), Best Adapted Screenplay (win) and Best
Film Editing (under the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes), for the
film. Only one other recipient has accomplished the same
feat of earning four simultaneous nominations in four
different categories for the same film: Warren
Beatty for Reds (1981). Composer Alan Mencken also
received four simultaneous nominations for Beauty and
the Beast (1991), but three of the nominations were in
the same category: Best Original Song. Mencken also scored
three Best Original Song nominations this year for Enchanted -
losing all three nods to Once's "Falling Slowly".
This is the second year in a row that the film with
3 Oscar nominations for Best Original Song lost (Dreamgirls' three
nominees lost to An Inconvenient Truth's "I
Need to Wake Up" last year).]
The other Best Picture nominees were:
- director Paul Thomas Anderson's turn-of-the-century
California oil-drilling epic There Will Be Blood (with
eight nominations, including two wins for Best Actor and
Best Cinematography), adapted from Upton Sinclair's novel Oil!; with
other nominations for Best Art Direction, Best Director,
Best Editing, Best Sound Editing, and Best Adapted Screenplay
- director Joe Wright's British epic drama of
betrayal and lost love, the acclaimed period piece Atonement (with
seven nominations, and only one win for Best Original Score),
adapted from Ian McEwan's prize-winning novel about regret
and lovers Ceclia Tallis (Keira Knightley) and housekeeper's
son/childhood friend Robbie Turner (James McAvoy) torn apart
by a false allegation from Cecilia's over-imaginative younger
sister Briony (Saoirse Ronan), with other nominations for
Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design,
Best Supporting Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay
- director Tony Gilroy's legal thriller Michael
Clayton (with seven nominations, and only one win for
Best Supporting Actress), with other nominations for Best
Director, Best Original Score, Best Actor, Best Supporting
Actor, and Best Original Screenplay; it was the only Best
Picture-nominated film with multiple acting nominations
- director Jason Reitman's dark comedy Juno (with
four nominations and only one win for Best Original Screenplay),
about a 16-year-old girl's unplanned pregnancy; its other
nominations included Best Director and Best Actress; with
his second feature film, Reitman was the 30 year-old
son of director/producer Ivan Reitman known for Stripes
(1981) and Ghostbusters (1984)
Normally, the nominated directors of Best Picture
nominees match up fairly well. This time, Joe Wright was snubbed
for a directorial nomination for Atonement, and was
replaced by a nod to American director Julian Schnabel for
his French film - an unconventional and uplifting biopic titled The
Diving Bell and the Butterfly (with no wins). It would
be rare for Schnabel to win Best Director without a Best Picture
nomination.
All of the Best Director nominees were first-time
nominees, except for winner Joel Coen, who had previously received
multiple nominations for Fargo (1996),
and Tony Gilroy's nomination was for his directorial debut
feature film (he had previously co-written the Bourne films).
Paul Thomas Anderson had previously been nominated twice for
Best Original Screenplay, for Boogie Nights (1997) and Magnolia
(1999). The dual directing nomination for the Coens
was the first time a sibling team had been nominated
in the category (and to date, the last Best Picture-winning
film to have more than one credited director):
[Note: The Coen Brothers were also the third duo
directing team to be nominated in Academy Awards history
-- after dual nominations (and a win) for Jerome Robbins
and Robert Wise for West Side Story
(1961),
and dual nominations for Warren Beatty and Buck Henry for Heaven
Can Wait (1978). The Coens became only the second pair
of directors to win Best Director, for their directorial
pairing in No
Country For Old Men, after Robbins and Wise.]
It was notable that four of the ten Oscar-nominated
scripts this year were written by females - for their individual screenplays,
and they were all first-time nominees. The winners of
the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar were directors/scripters
the Coen Brothers for No Country for Old Men. Other
nominees in the category included director/scriptwriter Paul
Thomas Anderson for There Will Be Blood, writers Christopher
Hampton for Atonement and Ronald Harwood for The
Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and 28 year-old Sarah Polley
for the sensitive marital drama Away From Her about
Alzheimer's disease and its effect upon an aging couple: Fiona
Andersson (Julie Christie) and husband Grant (Gordon Pinsent). The
winner of the Best Original Screenplay Oscar was for ex-stripper/scriptwriter
pen-named Diablo Cody for Juno. The other nominees were
Tamara Jenkins for The Savages, Nancy Oliver for Lars
and the Real Girl, writers/directors Tony Gilroy for Michael
Clayton, and Brad Bird (with his second Oscar win for Best
Animated Feature Film - he won his first Oscar in the same
category for The Incredibles (2004)) for Ratatouille (with
five nominations, but not one for Best Song, although it won
Best Animated Feature Film).
The Best Documentary Feature category had 5 strong
nominees, four of which dealt with warfare or the effects of
war. The category was won, in an upset, by director Alex Gibney's Taxi
to the Dark Side, a searing indictment of the government's
illegal use of torture in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo
Bay - it focused on the death of innocent Afghan taxi driver
Dilawar who was brutally tortured to death after being targeted
as a terrorist (by a real terrorist). [The film's title was
derived from VP Dick Cheney's line after the 9/11 attack: "We
have to work the dark side." Gibney also helmed the Oscar-nominated Enron:
The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) and was
the executive producer of No End in Sight.]
The other Best Documentary Feature nominees included
the two front-runners:
- No End in Sight (Charles Ferguson's
detailed examination of the process behind the Bush Administration's
short-sighted decision to invade Iraq in 2003)
- Michael Moore's Sicko, using Moore's
typically sharp and insightful look at the American health
care system
- Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime
Experience
- War Dance
Tremendous controversy surrounded the selection
of nominees for Best Foreign Language Film. The winner in the
category was Fälscher, Die (aka The Counterfeiters) (Austria)
- the strong favorite, about Nazis during the Holocaust recruiting
an imprisoned Russian-Jewish mobster/forger to produce fake
foreign currency. The other four nominees were: 12 (Russia)
- a remake of 12 Angry Men (1957), Beaufort (Israel), Katyn (Poland),
and Mongol (Kazakhstan).
Ten of the 20 acting nomination slots went to
British-Canadian-Irish (two winners were British/Irish) and
Australian performers, to Frenchwoman Marion Cotillard (win),
and to Spanish-born actor Javier Bardem (win).
European (non-American) performers took all four
prizes in the acting competitions - the last time (and only
other time) this occurred was for films in the year 1964.
The Best Actor winner was the favorite: 50 year-old
Irish actor Daniel Day-Lewis (with his fourth Best Actor
nomination and fourth career nomination, and second Best
Actor Oscar) for his performance as successful but evil silver
prospector and oil-catter Daniel Plainview in There Will
Be Blood [Note: Daniel Day-Lewis won the Best Actor Oscar
for My Left Foot (1989), and was also nominated as Best
Actor for In the Name of the Father (1993) and Gangs
of New York (2002)].
The other Best Actor nominees were:
- 46 year-old George Clooney (with his first Best
Actor nomination) for his role as Michael Clayton, a ruthless,
high-powered former prosecutor turned troubled "fixer" corporate
lawyer in New York in Michael Clayton [Note: George
Clooney was previously nominated (and won) as Best Supporting
Actor for Syriana (2005), and received a Best Original
Screenplay and Best Director nomination for Good Night,
and Good Luck (2005)]
- 44 year-old Johnny Depp (with his third Best
Actor nomination and third career nomination) for
his role as the 19th century demonic, vengeful, and murderous
barber Benjamin Barker (aka Sweeney Todd), who avenged his
wife and daughter's deaths by slitting the perpetrator's
throat and making meat pies of the body, in the horror musical Sweeney
Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, an adaptation
of the Broadway stage musical classic by Stephen Sondheim
(the major Tony Awards winner in 1979) [Note: Johnny Depp
was previously nominated as Best Actor for Pirates
of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) and Finding
Neverland (2004)]
- 61 year-old Tommy Lee Jones (with his third Oscar
nomination, but only his first Best Actor nomination)
as grieving father Hank Deerfield of an AWOL prisoner (and
Iraqi war soldier) in Paul Haggis' flop film In the Valley
of Elah [Note: Tommy Lee Jones was previously nominated
as Best Supporting Actor for JFK (1991) and won Best
Supporting Actor for The Fugitive (1993)]
- 49 year-old Viggo Mortensen (with his first nomination)
for his role as mysterious and secretive Russian chauffeur-turned-mobster
Nikolai living in London in Canadian director David Cronenberg's
violent thriller Eastern Promises (the film's sole nomination),
noted for its nude fight scene in a bathhouse
The Best Actress winner was an upset win for
32 year-old French actress Marion Cotillard (with her first nomination
and Oscar win) for her role as famed tempestuous singer Edith
Piaf (Piaf's recordings were lip-synched by Cotillard) in co-writer/director
Olivier Dahan's La Vie en Rose (Fr.) (aka La Môme) (with
three nominations and two wins for Best Makeup and Best Actress,
and a nomination for Best Costume Design).
[Note: It was the first acting Oscar awarded
to a French-language film. She was only the third performer
in a Foreign Language film to win one of the Academy’s
acting prizes, following Sophia Loren in Two Women (1960,
It.) and Roberto Benigni in Life Is Beautiful (1997,
It.). And she became the fifth performer to win for a performance
that was not completely in English, following previous Oscar
winners: Benicio Del Toro in Traffic (2000), Roberto
Benigni in Life Is Beautiful (1997, It.), Robert De
Niro in The Godfather: Part II (1974), and
Sophia Loren in Two Women (1960, It.). Cotillard's win
was also the seventh lead actress win in the last nine
Oscars for a portrayal of a real person.]
The other Best Actress nominees were:
- 38 year-old Australian actress Cate Blanchett
(with her second Best Actress nomination, and fourth/fifth career
nomination) for her role as Queen Elizabeth I in director
Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth: The Golden Age (with two
nominations, including a win for Best Costume Design)
[Note: With this nomination, Blanchett joined only four other
male performers (Bing Crosby, Peter O'Toole, Paul Newman, and
Al Pacino) who have been nominated twice for Oscars for playing
the same character in two different films. She
received her first Best Actress nomination for portraying the
British monarch in Elizabeth (1998). She won a Best
Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as Katharine Hepburn
in The Aviator (2004) and was nominated for Best Supporting
Actress for Notes on a Scandal (2006).]
- 66 year-old British actress Julie Christie
(with her fourth Best Actress nomination and fourth career
nomination) for her role as afflicted Alzheimer's patient
Fiona Andersson in actress-turned-director Sarah Polley's
debut feature film, Away From Her, Polley's Oscar-nominated
adaptation of the Alice Munro short story The Bear Came
Over the Mountain [Note: Julie Christie won the Best
Actress Oscar for Darling (1965), and was also nominated
as Best Actress for McCabe
& Mrs. Miller (1971) and Afterglow (1997).]
- 43 year-old Laura Linney (with her second Best
Actress nomination and third career nomination) as
failed, middle-aged playwright Wendy Savage who battled her
bossy, dysfunctional sibling brother Jon (Philip Seymour
Hoffman) about putting their aging and sick father Lenny
(Philip Bosco) in a convalescent home in writer/director
Tamara Jenkins' meditation on aging and dying The Savages (with
two nominations) [Note: Laura Linney was previously nominated
as Best Actress for You Can Count on Me (2000), and
as Best Supporting Actress for Kinsey (2004).]
- 20 year-old Canadian actress Ellen Page (with
her first nomination) for her performance as the smug,
wise-cracking, precocious title character Juno MacGuff in Juno,
who found herself pregnant after one sexual encounter with
a friend (Michael Sera), and took her baby to term but gave
it up for adoption to a childless yuppie couple (Jennifer
Garner and Jason Bateman) [Note: Ellen Page became the first American
actress under the age of 21 to receive a Best Actress nomination.
Other under-21 nominees included Isabelle Adjani (FR) in
1975, Keisha Castle-Hughes (NZ) in 2002, and Keira Knightley
(UK) in 2005.]
The Best Supporting Actor winner was the favorite, 38
year-old Spanish-born actor Javier Bardem (with his second nomination
and first Oscar win, following a Best Actor nomination
for Before Night Falls (2000)) as cold-blooded assassin
and deranged killer Anton Chigurh (with the catchphrase: "Call
it") in No Country for Old Men.
The other Best Supporting Actor nominees were:
- 32 year-old Casey Affleck (with his first nomination)
as the tormented, creepy and shifty Jesse James killer Robert
Ford in director Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of
Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (with two nominations,
including Best Cinematography)
- 82 year-old Hal Halbrook (with his first nomination
after 66 years in the business), the oldest Best Supporting
Actor nominee in Oscar history, as lonely, aging and philosophical
widower Ron Franz who helped the film's disillusioned wanderer
in director Sean Penn's Into the Wild (with two nominations,
including Best Editing) based upon Jon Krakauer's nonfiction
book
- 40 year-old Philip Seymour Hoffman (with his second nomination,
following a Best Actor nomination for Capote (2005))
as rogue, short-fused Middle East CIA operative Gust Avrakatos
in director Mike Nichol’s dramedy Charlie Wilson's
War (the film's sole nomination) about helping
the Afghanis defend themselves during the Soviet War in Afghanistan
in the 1980s
- 58 year-old British actor Tom Wilkinson (with
his second nomination, following a Best Actor nomination
for In the Bedroom (2001)) as the firm's mentally-troubled
top liability litigator/attorney Arthur Edens accusing his
agro-chemical company of poisoning people in Michael Clayton
The Best Supporting Actress winner was a surprise
upset for 47 year-old British actress Tilda Swinton (with her first nomination
and Oscar win) as the chemical company's chief in-house counsel
Karen Crowder - an ambitious, fiendish, but insecure and neurotic
litigating rival of Michael Clayton (George Clooney) in Michael
Clayton.
The other Best Supporting Actress nominees were:
- 38 year-old Cate Blanchett (with her third Best
Supporting Actress nomination and fourth/fifth career
nomination) for her gender-switched, mid-60s Bob Dylan personification
(as Jude Quinn) in writer/director Todd Haynes' refracted
biopic I'm Not There (the film's sole nomination)
[Note: Cate Blanchett received two Best Actress nominations
for Elizabeth (1998) and for Elizabeth: The Golden
Age (2007). She already won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar
for The Aviator (2004) and was nominated for Best Supporting
Actress for Notes on a Scandal (2006). With this nomination,
she joined a handful of other actresses and actors who were
nominated for lead and supporting Oscars for different films
in the same year.]
- 83 year-old Ruby Dee (with her first nomination)
in her very brief role as Frank Lucas' mother Mama Lucas
in director Ridley Scott's American Gangster (with
two nominations, including Best Art Direction) [Note: This
was Ruby Dee's first nomination, although she had been in
films for five decades, in such films as A Raisin in the
Sun (1961) and Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989).]
- 13 year-old Irish actress Saoirse Ronan (with
her first nomination) as calculating, aspiring writer
Briony Tallis, not aware of the consequences of her actions
upon her sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley) after reporting
her first view of sex in Atonement
- 38 year-old Amy Ryan (with her first nomination)
for her harrowing portrayal of drug-addicted, vulgar and
horrid coke-snorting Boston mother Helene McCready who lost
her 4 year-old girl by kidnapping in Ben Affleck's directorial
debut feature film, the crime drama Gone Baby Gone (the
film's sole nomination)
Oscar Snubs and Omissions:
Sean Penn's fourth directorial feature Into
the Wild received only two nominations, and he was denied
a nomination as Best Director. And director Ridley Scott's American
Gangster also received only two nominations. Although Sweeney
Todd had three nominations overall (and won only for
Best Art Direction), its director Tim Burton (who has never
been nominated as Best Director) was overlooked, as was director
David Fincher for Zodiac, longtime Oscar-snubbed director
David Cronenberg for Eastern Promises, and 83 year-old
Sidney Lumet for his best directorial work since The Verdict
(1982) with Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.
Three of the big-budgeted studio productions
of the year with large marketing campaigns were denied Writing,
Directing, and Best Picture nominations:
- Universal Pictures' American Gangster
- Universal's Charlie Wilson's War
- DreamWorks' Sweeney Todd
Director Andrew Dominik for The Assassination
of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (with two nominations)
and Sarah Polley for Away from Her (with only two
nominations) were also denied Best Picture/Best Director
nominations. Another major Best Picture snub was for the
universally-praised, untraditional musical and sleeper film
from Irish writer/director John Carney titled Once (with
only one nomination, a win for Best Original Song Falling
Slowly), which drew comparisons to Brief
Encounter (1946).
Director Adam Shankman's musical Hairspray,
about a chubby girl named Tracy (Nikki Blonsky in her screen
debut) who racially-integrated a 1960s TV dance show through
her participation - and with John Travlota (in drag in a dress)
and Christopher Walken as her parents, received multiple nominations
and awards - but no Oscar recognition. Also, The
Simpsons Movie was missing from the short list in the Best
Animated Feature Film category. Writer/director Garth Jennings'
coming-of-age comedy-drama Son of Rambow (2008, UK) about
two English schoolboys recreating the Rambo film First Blood was
neglected.
Two of the most highly-regarded foreign films
of the year were not among the five nominees for Best Foreign
Language Film:
- writer-director Cristian Mungiu's harrowing
look at a secret illegal abortion in Ceausescu's oppressive
totalitarian Romania in the late 1980's, in 4 Months,
3 Weeks and 2 Days (Romania) (winner of the Palme d'Or)
- the mostly B/W animated film Persepolis (France),
based upon Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel about growing
up Iranian during the fall of the Shah and the rise of the
fundamentalist Islamic state (although it was a Best Animated
Feature nominee)
Other possible nominees might have been Silent
Light (Mexico) and Secret Sunshine (Korea).
Snubs for Best Actor included:
- Philip
Seymour Hoffman as squabbling sibling Jon Savage in The
Savages and
as older scheming brother Andy Hanson in Sidney Lumet's Before
the Devil Knows You're Dead, but he was nominated instead
for his supporting role in Charlie Wilson's War
- Emile Hirsch as the adventurous young student
Christopher McCandless who embarked on a two-year odyssey
that ended tragically in the Alaskan wilderness in Denali
National Park in 1992 in Into the Wild
- James McAvoy
as doomed suitor Robbie Turner (for Keira Knightley as
Cecilia Tallis) in Atonement
- Casey Affleck as private
investigator Patrick Kenzie searching for a missing girl
in Boston in Gone
Baby Gone
- Ryan Gosling as introverted, sex doll-loving
computer geek Lars Lindstrom, similar to Jimmy Stewart's Harvey,
in Lars and the Real Girl
- Denzel Washington as 1970s
Harlem drug lord Frank Lucas and heroin smuggler (in coffins
of Vietnam war victims) in American Gangster and as
real-life 1930s small-town Texas Wiley College professor
Melvin B. Tolson, the charismatic leader of the school's
debate team in his own directed film The Great Debaters
- Mathieu Amalric as paralyzed real-life editor of French magazine Elle Jean-Dominque
Bauby who suffered a stroke at the age of 43 in The Diving
Bell and the Butterfly
- Frank Langella as reclusive
author Leonard Schiller in writer/director Andrew Wagner's Starting
Out in the Evening
- Josh Brolin as ruthlessly-pursued
hunter Llewelyn Moss in No Country for Old Men
- Jack
Nicholson as adventurous terminally-ill patient Edward Cole
in director Rob Reiner's The Bucket List
- Brad Pitt
as outlaw Jesse James in The Assassination of Jesse James
by the Coward Robert Ford
- Russell Crowe as outlaw
Ben Wade in director James Mangold's 3:10 to Yuma (the
remake of the 1957 western)
- Tom Hanks as renegade 1980s
Texas politician Rep. Charlie Wilson who used his post on
an intelligence committee to wage a war against the Sovets
in Afghanistan in Charlie
Wilson's War
- Benicio del Toro as Jerry Sunborne in
Susanne Bier's domestic drama Things We Lost in the Fire
- John Cusack as Iraqi war widower Stanley Philipps in James
Strouse's Grace
is Gone
- Christian Bale as real-life German-born American
fighter pilot and 1960s Laos POW Dieter Dengler in Rescue
Dawn and as rancher Dan Evans in 3:10 to Yuma
- Don
Cheadle as real-life ex-con-turned-radio talk show host
and 1960s community activist Ralph Waldo "Petey" Greene
Jr. in Kasi Lemmons' biopic Talk to Me
- Tony Leung
Chiu Wai as Japanese collaborator Mr. Yee in director Ang
Lee's Chinese-language, WWII-era Shanghai sexy NC-17 rated
spy thriller Lust,
Caution (with no nominations)
- Khalid Abdalla as expatriate
Afghani Amir who returned to his ravaged homeland in director
Marc Forster's The Kite Runner
- Steve Carell as
sensitive, widowed father Dan Burns of three in love with
his younger brother Mitch's (Dane Cook) girlfriend Marie
(Juliette Binoche) in director Peter Hedges' Dan in Real Life
Snubs for Best Supporting Actor included:
- Tommy Lee Jones as weary Sheriff Ed Tom Bell
searching for good ol' boy hunter Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin)
targeted by drug dealers for stealing $2 million of drug
money in No
Country for Old Men, although he did receive a Best Actor
nomination for In the Valley of Elah
- Jack Black as
unemployed artist Malcolm (Jennifer Jason Leigh's fiancee)
in Noah Baumbach's Margot at the Wedding
- Philip Bosco
as ailing father Lenny Savage in The Savages
- Vincent
Cassel as enforcer Kirill in Eastern Promises
- Russell
Crowe as detective Richie Roberts in American Gangster
- Tom
Cruise as Senator Jasper Irving in Lions for Lambs
- Paul Dano as religious figure Eli Sunday in There Will Be
Blood
- Robert Downey, Jr. as Paul Avery in Zodiac,
Chiewetel Ejiofor as radio program director Dewey Hughes in Talk
to Me
- Ben Foster as Charlie Prince in 3:10 to Yuma
- Albert Finney as victimized parent Charles Hanson in Before
the Devil Knows You're Dead
- Andy Griffith as Old Joe
in Adrienne Shelly's Waitress
- Ed Harris as Det. Remy
Bressant in Gone Baby Gone
- Ethan Hawke as younger
brother Hank Hanson in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
- Heath
Ledger as young NY actor Robbie Clark in I'm Not
There
- Omar Metwally as Egyptian terrorism suspect Anwar El-Ibrahimi
who went missing in Rendition
- Sydney Pollack as the
firm's co-founder Marty Bach in Michael Clayton
- Robert
Redford as Professor Stephen Malley in Lions for Lambs
- Max von Sydow as widower father Papinou in The Diving Bell
and the Butterfly
- John Travolta as Tracy's mother Edna
Turnblad in Hairspray
- Forest Whitaker as Dr. James
Farmer, Sr. in The Great Debaters
Snubs for Best Actress included:
- Angelina
Jolie for her performance as Mariane Pearl, the French wife
of an American journalist brutally killed in Pakistan in A
Mighty Heart
- Keira Knightley for her role as Cecilia
Tallis, the older conflicted sister of her accusing sibling
in Atonement
- Helena Bonham Carter (director Burton's
wife) as London pie seller Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd
- Amy
Adams as fairy tale princess Giselle who was banished by
evil Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon) from her animated kingdom
and reappeared vulnerable and clueless in modern-day Manhattan
in Enchanted
- Jodie
Foster as vengeful assaulted woman Erica Bain in The Brave
One
- Czech actress Marketa Irglova as a Czech émigré in
the low-budget Irish film Once
- Keri Russell (in her
first lead role) as small Southern diner waitress Jenna in Waitress
- newcomer Tang Wei as Mr. Yee's seductive
Mata Hari mistress Wong Chia Chi/Mrs. Mak in Ang Lee's Lust, Caution
Snubs for Best Supporting Actress included:
- Jennifer Jason Leigh (never nominated!) as
engaged, free-spirited fiancee Pauline in a dysfunctional
family ruled by her opinionated and hateful sister Margot
(Nicole Kidman) in Margot at the
Wedding
- Marie-Josee Croze as Henriette Durand in The
Diving Bell and the Butterfly
- Jennifer Garner as 'perfect'
adoptive parent Vanessa Loring in Juno
- Catherine Keener
as modern day hippie Jan Burres in Into the Wild
- Queen
Latifah as Motormouth Maybelle in Hairspray
- Olympia
Dukakis as Alzheimer's 'widow' Marian in Away From Her
- Susan Sarandon as distraught wife and mother Joan Deerfield
in In the Valley of Elah
- Fernanda Montenegro as maternal
Alzheimer's sufferer Tránsito Ariza in Love in the
Time of Cholera
- Meryl Streep as experienced reporter
Janine Roth in Lions for Lambs
- Emily Mortimer as
sister-in-law Karin Lindstrom in the offbeat comedy Lars
and the Real Girl
- Julia Roberts as Communist-hating
Texas socialite Joanne Herring promoting the funding of a
secret war in Afghanistan in the 1980s in Charlie Wilson's
War
- Emmanuelle Seigner
as paralyzed Elle French magazine editor Jean-Dominque
Bauby's ex-wife Céline Desmoulins in The Diving Bell
and the Butterfly
- Kate Winslet as foul-mouthed
harlot Tula in director John Turturro's musical Romance & Cigarettes
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