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Oscar nominations 2010: Jeff Bridges is best actor frontrunner

The 60-year-old is considered 1 of the best actors never to win an Academy Award. He was nominated for The Contender (2001), Starman (1985), Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1975), and The Last Picture Show (1972), and his role as The Dude in The Big Lebowski has become a cult classic.

In Crazy Heart he plays Bad Blake, a washed-up, alcoholic country singer. He also sings, and doesn’t do a bad job of it.

Bridges comes from Hollywood stock – he is son of the late Lloyd Bridges and brother of Beau, who appeared with him in The Fabulous Baker Boys.

Clooney fits effortlessly into the role of Ryan Bingham, a “corporate downsizer” whose job it is to fire people as smoothly and painlessly as possible.

An Oscars regular, Clooney was a best actor nominee in 2008 for Michael Clayton but lost out to Daniel Day-Lewis for There Will Be Blood.

The 48-year-old has one Academy Award to his name – best supporting actor for Syriana in 2006. It was one of three nominations that year – the others were best director and best original screenplay for Good Night and Good Luck.

This is Firth’s first Oscar nomination and his performance as a gay English professor grieving for the death of his lover (Matthew Goode) is considered the best work of his career.

Although he has received good notices in the past for serious dramas, he remains best known for two things – playing a wet-shirted Mr Darcy in the TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, and his comic, uptight Englishman act in everything from Bridget Jones’s Diary to Mamma Mia!

The buzz around A Single Man began at the Venice Film Festival in September, when Firth, 49, won the best actor prize. He was also nominated for a Golden Globe.

When Nelson Mandela was asked 15 years ago who should play him in a film version of his life, his reply was instant: Morgan Freeman.

The star of The Shawshank Redemption and Driving Miss Daisy wanted to adapt Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk To Freedom, but the book was too big. Invictus, which focused on Mandela’s role in South Africa’s 1995 Rugby World Cup victory, was the perfect vehicle.

Freeman, 72, has three Oscar nominations and one win under his belt: best supporting acting for Million Dollar Baby in 2005.

Renner, 39, is a relative unknown.

Although he has worked in film and TV for over a decade, this is his breakthrough role.

In The Hurt Locker he plays Staff Sergeant William James, a bomb disposal expert in Iraq who is addicted to the risks of the job.

Renner fell into acting at college. He was studying computer science and criminology when he decided to try an acting class, and found he had a talent for it.

He has appeared in 28 Weeks Later and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, plus TV series SWAT and Angel. Forthcoming projects include Marvel blockbuster The Avengers and Ben Affleck’s Boston crime drama The Town.

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