Best Actor
Nominees:
Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
George Clooney, Up in the Air
Colin Firth, A Single Man
Morgan Freeman, Invictus
Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker
No surprises here; all five nominees were widely predicted. The vectors, however, have changed in the past month. Clooney, with his career-defining performance as a charming loner who is hired to fire people, and Firth, as a gay teacher mourning his dead partner, both came out strong in September, when their pictures played at the Toronto Film Festival. In December, Clooney won the majority of the critics' awards. But Bridges, playing an aging country singer with an alcoholic past and a long shot at redemption, won the Golden Globe, Critics' Choice and Screen Actors Guild prizes and now has to be considered the favorite. Long admired and well liked in Hollywood, he earned an Oscar nomination 38 years ago for Best Supporting Actor for The Last Picture Show. He could have his best picture show on March 7.