Sizing up the Academy Awards

LOS ANGELES

After 40 years in various Los Angeles venues, the Academy Awards return Sunday to Hollywood itself, to a glittering new theater -- Oscar's first permanent home.

The Kodak Theatre sits on Hollywood Boulevard a mere block from the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, where the first Oscars were presented in a 15-minute ceremony in 1929.

Here's a look at this year's nominees, in alphabetical order, in six major categories:

Best Picture

"A Beautiful Mind" tells the story of John Nash, a math genius who suffered 35 years of debilitating schizophrenia. He finally came to deal with the disease, and in 1994 was awarded the Nobel Prize for economics. The film received unwanted publicity from printed reports that it ignored Nash's alleged homosexuality and anti-Semitism. His biographer, Sylvia Nasar, responded that although Nash had close personal relations with men in his 20s, there was no evidence he had sex with men. She added that his anti-Semitic remarks came after the onset of his illness, when he believed himself to be Job, a slave in chains, the emperor of Antarctica and a messiah living in hell.

"Gosford Park" brought together the cream of England's actors for an Agatha Christie-like murder mystery set at a country estate. The plot unfolds both upstairs and downstairs, but there was no class consciousness among the cast. No entourages, no fancy trailers or dressing rooms. "I find the more actors you have, the more they take care of themselves," says producer-director Robert Altman, "and the less I have to do."

"In the Bedroom" demonstrates how a "small" movie seemingly destined for the art-house circuit can stand among the biggies at Oscar time. It was nominated not only for best picture, but for three performances and adapted screenplay. Based on a short story by Andre Dubus, it concerns a Maine couple (Sissy Spacek, Tom Wilkinson) whose lives are nearly destroyed when their only son is murdered. How they deal with the tragedy provides the shocking climax.

"The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" represents the biggest movie gamble in recent times, perhaps ever. New Line, a second-tier studio owned by AOL Time Warner, spent a year and a half shooting three complete features based on the J.R.R. Tolkien classic at a cost of almost $300 million. The project lacked marquee names, and if the first movie tanked, it could have meant a huge loss. Happily for New Line, the movie lorded over the box office, climbing toward a $300 million gross with no end in sight. It has a leading 13 nominations.

"Moulin Rouge" marks Australian director Baz Luhrmann's attempt to reinvent the musical after laying the groundwork with two highly stylized, music-driven films -- "Strictly Ballroom" and "William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet." For "Moulin Rouge," he musicalized fin de siecle Paris with pop songs from the 20th century. Academy voters bestowed eight nominations, though Luhrmann was snubbed in the best-director category.

Best Actor

Russell Crowe could enter the record books with his portrayal of the delusional John Nash in "A Beautiful Mind." A victory on Sunday would put Crowe, honored last year as best actor for "Gladiator," in the company of Luise Rainer, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Jason Robards and Tom Hanks as winners of back-to-back Oscars. The contentious Crowe enjoys tweaking doubters of "A Beautiful Mind": "When the movie came out, a certain publication said, 'Maximum potential box-office: $35 million,"' he notes. The actual results: The film will top out well above $150 million.

Sean Penn has followed an independent course since his impressive performance 20 years ago as a drugged-out surfer in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." Praised as one of Hollywood's finest actors, he has appeared mostly in smaller films simply because they interested him. Nominated for "Dead Man Walking" in 1995 and "Sweet and Lowdown" in 1999, Penn was cited again this year for "I Am Sam." He plays a retarded father fighting for custody of his 7-year-old daughter.

Will Smith has come a long way from "Fresh Prince of Bel Air." Having risen to fame as a rap artist, TV sitcom actor and action star ("Men in Black," "Independence Day"), Smith has moved into drama, and took on the role of the legendary boxer in "Ali." Facing the press at the nominees' luncheon earlier this month, he was asked if the nominations for himself, Denzel Washington and Halle Berry represented a step forward for black actors. Smith's reply: "We all want to be judged as human beings."

Denzel Washington commented: "I think in this case everybody voted for the people they thought were best, and they happened to be African-Americans. I don't put any particular spin on it. It may be there are just better roles for us" than in the past. Washington won a supporting-actor Oscar for the Civil War drama "Glory" (1989), and has been nominated as supporting actor in "Cry Freedom" (1987) and for leads in "Malcolm X" (1992) and "The Hurricane" (1999). He was nominated this year for playing a rogue L.A.P.D. officer in "Training Day."

Tom Wilkinson may be best known to American audiences as one of the strippers in "The Full Monty." It was his role as a small-town doctor whose life is shattered by the murder of his son in "In the Bedroom" that earned him his first Academy nomination. The British theater actor has appeared in such films as "Shakespeare in Love," "Black Knight," "The Patriot" and "Rush Hour." He said the nomination was "beyond my wildest dreams." But he shunned campaigning: "I like to be detached from the celebrity side of the business."

Best Actress

Halle Berry won her first Academy nomination for her portrayal of a widow who falls in love with her husband's prison executioner in "Monster's Ball." The Cleveland native got her start in a recurring role on the nighttime soap "Knots Landing," and had solid performances in television (an Emmy for "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge") and film ("Jungle Fever," "Bulworth"). "I never think I'm going to win an award," she says. "It's been a long journey."

Judi Dench has many queenly honors. She was Oscar-nominated as Queen Victoria in "Mrs. Brown," won for supporting actress as Queen Elizabeth I in "Shakespeare in Love" and was given the title of Dame by Elizabeth II. But she also has the common touch. She has played James Bond's boss in three 007 movies and starred in the TV sitcom "As Time Goes By," a hit in England and on PBS in America. Dench has one of her most powerful roles in "Iris," portraying novelist Iris Murdoch in her struggle with Alzheimer's disease.

Nicole Kidman won her first Academy nomination as the Camille-like cabaret performer in "Moulin Rouge." She had been nominated for two best-actress Golden Globes this year: for "Moulin Rouge" (for which she won for best musical or comedy actress) and for the thriller "The Others." Kidman avoided watching the announcement of the Academy nominations: "I was making a very intense film in England, and I didn't want to invest the emotion. At the end of the day, someone held up a sign: 'Nominated, Best Actress.' I said, 'Which one?"'

Sissy Spacek scored her sixth nomination as best actress for playing the angry, grieving mother of a murdered son in "In the Bedroom." (She has won once, for 1980's "Coal Miner's Daughter"). Along with the other nominees, Spacek has been making the rounds of the awards shows, and remarks, "It's a beautiful thing that we got to know each other. In my category, it would be an honor to lose to any one of them."

Renee Zellweger stands out from the other nominees in this category because she starred in a comedy, a form generally overlooked by the dramatic-minded academy. "Bridget Jones's Diary," for which Zellweger took on a British accent and some extra pounds, was based on the best-selling book by Helen Fielding. Though her nomination was for a comic role, Zellweger notes, "I've always thought of myself as a dramatic actress, because that's how I started."

Best Supporting Actor

Jim Broadbent, like Tom Wilkinson, is a sturdy English character actor who resists being typecast. He appeared in two comic roles in 2001 -- in "Moulin Rouge" and "Bridget Jones's Diary" -- but was nominated for his performance as the compassionate husband of the Alzheimer's-stricken Murdoch in "Iris." Broadbent's reaction to the Academy nomination: "It was a great shock. I'm still getting used to the idea."

Ethan Hawke, the troubled preppie of "Dead Poets Society," erased any boy-actor image with his "Training Day" performance as a rookie cop being taught by a corrupt veteran how to cheat the system. Although Hawke's role is as big as Denzel Washington's, he has no problem with the supporting tag: "The fact that I got put in that category is testimony to Denzel's great performance."

Ben Kingsley, best-actor winner in 1983 as the saintly "Gandhi," turned nasty in "Sexy Beast," playing a "ticking time bomb" of a London mobster. Kingsley, who was knighted a few months ago in Britain, was asked recently how that compared with the Academy Award nomination. Sir Ben replied: "There is very little comparison. It's like asking, 'Which of your children do you like the most?"'

Ian McKellen, nominated for his portrayal of the wizard Gandalf in "The Lord of the Rings," is another British veteran praised for versatility. He was nominated once before, for best actor for his role as faded horror-film director James Whale in "Gods and Monsters." McKellen has won a Tony for his Salieri in "Amadeus," and an Emmy for playing the czar in HBO's "Rasputin."

Jon Voight is part of a father-daughter Oscar team. He won his for the lead role in 1978's "Coming Home"; Angelina Jolie won supporting actress in 1999's "Girl, Interrupted." For this year's "Ali," Voight assumed the toupee, big cigar and distinctive voice of sportscaster Howard Cosell. Voight notes he was once interviewed by Cosell, around the time the actor's boxing film "The Champ" came out.

Best Supporting Actress

Jennifer Connelly started in films at age 11, appearing in Sergio Leone's gangster saga "Once Upon a Time in America." In 2000, she attracted attention as Ed Harris' lover in "Pollock" and as a junkie in "Requiem for a Dream." She won her first nomination for "A Beautiful Mind," in which she plays the compassionate wife of a schizophrenic husband.

Helen Mirren, perhaps best known to American audiences for her starring role as a no-nonsense police detective in the PBS series "Prime Suspect," scored her nomination as an oh-so-proper housekeeper in "Gosford Park." Mirren won the supporting-actress award from the Screen Actors Guild earlier this month, and said on accepting her trophy: "In medieval Britain, actors were called rogues and vagabonds, and we are actually rogues and vagabonds, no matter how we look tonight."

Maggie Smith is an old hand at the Oscars. She has won two awards ("The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," "California Suite") and a total of six nominations. Her latest is for her role in "Gosford Park" as a snobbish guest at a country weekend that ends in murder. Smith also could be seen in the year's highest-grossing movie, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."

Marisa Tomei is another past winner in this category, having won for her wise-cracking girlfriend in the 1992 comedy "My Cousin Vinny," one of the rare times academy voters have bestowed an Oscar for a comic role. Tomei turned dramatic for "In the Bedroom," playing a single mother involved with a younger man, sending her ex-husband into a jealous frenzy.

Kate Winslet appears as the young Iris Murdoch to Judi Dench's older Murdoch in "Iris." It's the second time Winslet has been nominated for the same role and the same movie as another nominee: In 1998, both she and Gloria Stuart were nominated for playing Rose in "Titanic." Of "Iris," Winslet says, "It's a little English film that had a lot of producers and nearly didn't get made."

Best Director

Robert Altman, who has had more comebacks than Mike Tyson, made a smashing return to film prominence with "Gosford Park." His first nomination came for 1970's "M-A-S-H," and he was nominated again for 1975's "Nashville." Then, after a dry spell, he was back in the early '90s with nominations for "The Player" and "Short Cuts." Of "Gosford Park's" recent SAG award for best ensemble, he said: "That has to be the best possible award for me to get."

Ron Howard, who has been in films or television nearly all his life, got his first Academy nomination for directing and co-producing "A Beautiful Mind." He recalls: "I first became aware of the awards when I was 6 and 'Music Man,' in which I appeared, was named in several categories. I don't think it won any, but I've been watching ever since."

Peter Jackson spent 18 months in his native New Zealand simultaneously filming three features based on the Tolkien tales of Middle-earth. The first: "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring." The next two films will appear late this year and in late 2003. Of the first film's leading 13 nominations, Jackson says, "Somehow, you've entered a sort of category in film history you could never have dreamed."

Ridley Scott's "Gladiator" won Oscars last year for best picture and for Russell Crowe as best actor, but not for the director. He gets another shot this year with the battle film "Black Hawk Down." After directing 2,000 TV commercials in England, Scott turned to features with "The Duellists" in 1977, and has specialized mostly in fast-action films such as "Alien," "Blade Runner" and "Thelma and Louise."

David Lynch has directed such diverse works as "Eraserhead," "Blue Velvet," "The Elephant Man," "Wild at Heart" and "Dune," and was co-creator of TV's "Twin Peaks." His nominated film, "Mulholland Drive," had a curious history. Lynch made it first as a TV pilot for ABC. When it was rejected, he converted it into a feature film. Lynch previously had Oscar nominations for "The Elephant Man" and "Blue Velvet."