Judi Dench - CHOCOLAT
"I see a woman who's too old to play games." As Juliette Binoche's landlady and secret ally in Chocolat, Dench, filled with an apparently authentic crankiness, has several nice scenes. She's just about the only real thing in Chocolat, but I think we need to set the bar a little higher than that. There is actually a school of thought that rates her as the favourite in the category. OK, she's Dame Judi Dench. She's M! She's great. And she won two years ago for Shakespeare In Love. It must be nice to have Miramax in your corner. She won the SAG award for supporting actress.

Marcia Gay Harden - POLLOCK
"I thought I knew every abstract expressionist in New York, but I don't know Jackson Pollock." Harden's odds are improved by the fact that hers is a lead performance nominated for the supporting prize. Her great disadvantage is that it's the least-seen performance in the category. When small pictures pick up a couple of acting nominations, the nomination itself is generally the award.Harden gives an ardent performance as Pollack's lover and champion, Lee Krasner, who subordinated her own career as a painter to his genius. With her flat-footed, implacable walk and outer-borough accent, Harden's Krasner is an unnerving combination of nag, agent and tank. This turn represents a career high point for an actor I've never much liked.

Kate Hudson - ALMOST FAMOUS
"How old are we really?" After a decade in which four second-generation Hollywood actors picked up Oscars - Nicolas Cage, Mira Sorvino, Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie - Hudson might be the fifth, unless the Academy decides enough is enough. If Cameron Crowe had had his way, Sarah Polley would have played Penny Lane, the central character, if not the protagonist, in Almost Famous. And she probably wouldn't have got an Oscar nomination. Polley's a great talent, but with her dour, downturned mouth and hurt eyes, she isn't anyone's California golden girl. Ironically, Hudson may actually be more deserving than Jolie was last year.

Frances McDormand - ALMOST FAMOUS
"It's your mom. She kind of freaked me out." It's unfortunate that Frances McDormand's Elaine Miller never meets Philip Seymour Hoffman's Lester Bangs, for they are parents warring for the soul of young William Miller, Cameron Crowe's autobiographical stand-in in Almost Famous.Winner of a statuette in 1996 for her indelible creation of Marge Gunderson, small-town cop and voice of reason in Fargo, McDormand had the great good fortune here to be handed a role that's non-stop Oscar clips. "You are rebellious and ungrateful of my love." "Rock stars have kidnapped my son." "You will meet the voice at the other end of this phone, and it will not be pretty." She stands alone in Almost Famous, her flinty personality and flat midwestern vowels set against the anything-goes ethos of 70s rock culture, and playing almost as many telephone scenes as Anna Magnani in La Voix Humaine.

Julie Walters - BILLY ELLIOT
"You don't fancy me, do you?" The surprise isn't that Billy Elliot picked up two nominations. It's that it only picked up two. You'd think its blend of toughness and sentimentality tied to its showbiz dreams would have given it a better shot at best picture than Chocolat. As Billy's dance teacher, Walters barks out commands like a drill instructor and floats through the movie on a cloud of cigarette smoke. It's as flamboyantly constructed a part as Elaine in Almost Famous, and an even more likely winner, since Walters, last nominated 18 years ago for Educating Rita, doesn't yet have a statuette.