Oscar, Best Actress: The Usual Suspects

Last year at this time there were two established front-runners in the Best Actress race from films that were already out in theaters: Julie Christie and Marion Cotillard. This year does not afford that luxury, as it seems likely that none of the eventual nominees will come from pictures that have been seen by the general public (meaning me).

Still, based on the festival buzz and other previews of the season, it seems clear that there are a certain group of actresses who are bound to be nominated, and a high percentage are women whose names are inevitably bandied about when it comes to Oscar talk.

We can start with the most nominated woman in the history of the world, Meryl Streep (I’m talking performance nominations–Edith Head had 35 in the Costume category). Streep can forget about Mamma Mia!, instead the nomination is likely to come in the drama Doubt, in which she plays a nun who suspects a teacher of child abuse. Streep has won two Oscars, but has also lost more Oscars (12) than any other performer, so is probably due for at least one more.

The Streep-in-training is Cate Blanchett, and she’s back again this year, after being nominated twice last year, for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. There is a lot of aging going on here, so her chances of nomination may go hand in hand with how good her makeup is.

I think the best chances of the inevitably-nominated have to be for Kate Winslet. She’s been nominated five times without a win. This year her stiffest competition may come from herself, as she is in two Oscar-bait roles: as a repressed housewife in Revolutionary Road, and The Reader, a World War II drama (there’s age makeup in this one, too). If Winslet doesn’t split her own votes she has to be considered a good possibility for a win.

Other recognizable names in this category are Angelina Jolie, as a mother of a missing child in Changeling, Anne Hathaway, de-glamming for a role in Rachel Getting Married, Keira Knightley, back in a corset, for The Duchess, and Nicole Kidman, in the epic Australia.

With so many big names in the hunt it seems that the out-of-left-field choices might be minimal this year, but one or two always sneak in. This year’s possibilities include Sally Hawkins as a chipper British girl in Happy-Go-Lucky, Melissa Leo in Frozen River, and the nomination for someone in a foreign language film, which this year may go, strangely enough, to a native English speaker: Kristin Scott Thomas in I’ve Loved You So Long.