1.
Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady
There's a therory that says that the AMPAS needs Meryl Streep more than Meryl Streep needs the AMPAS and I couldn't agree more! With an impressive score of 16 nominations and 2 wins, we can say that the Academy is "Streepaholic" and seeing her portraying the iconic and legendary/historic Margaret Thatcher in the biopic named The Iron Lady is almost a guarantee of Oscar nomination, specially when Thatcher had a unique speaking style and mannerisms and Streep shows it in the teaser trailer of movie. Streep is never less than fantastic in all the movies she's in, even when the movie sucks, and seeing her getting another Oscar nomination is just normal! But due to this year's competition, she may loose again and some folks of the Oscar predicting foruns say that she may not even being nominated because she will loose. Well, I disagree: one more Oscar nomination is always one more Oscar nomination and it's better getting the nod and not win than not getting the AMPAS recognition at all. Streep is the best actress alive in my opinion and I'm sure she will be outstanding in The Iron Lady and... well, she's Meryl Streep and she lost the Oscar for Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side) in 2009 - which was so unfair when Streep was so much worthy for Julie & Julia - so I think she will get her Academy Award nomination number 17 this year!
2.
Glenn Close for Albert Nobbs
Glenn Close got 5 Oscar nominations in the 80's, but since then she didn't got nominated for any Academy Award, so the upcoming Albert Nobbs (which will be released in the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival) is seen as a hope for her sixth nomination and first win. She already played the lead role of Albert Nobbs on stage, in the Off-Broadway production of The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs, that gave her the Obie Award of Best Actress in a Play in 1982. The movie is a personal project to Close, who also wrote the screenplay, and the AMPAS loves when personal projects that become a critical success and the role of a woman who dresses and assumes a manly identity in order to survive in late 19th century Ireland seems really meaty and having Rodrigo García as the director surely helps any actor (Nine Lives and Mother and Child had great acting all around). So, I think that this Close's comeback is very Oscar-friendly in the way that the Academy loves comebacks (she was never too far, but let's consider this a comeback to success and to Oscar race), so why not nominate Glenn Close? She's a well-respected actress in the television, theatre and cinema industries and had a big couple of iconic roles during her career...
3.
Keira Knightley for A Dangerous Method
It's all about hysteria! If you watch A Dangerous Method trailer you can't stop thinking how mad/crazy/mental hill Knightley's character seems, but the fact is that the Academy voters love this kind of characters and once Knightley has good dramatic chops, there are some high expectations around her Sabina Spielrein, Carl Jung's patient and mistress (the movie is centered in Jung and Sabina's love/sexual relationship). Her Russian accent seems a bit strange to me, but a performance isn't only based on the accent and maybe there are historical reasons for her pronunciation, but Knightley is a very competent performer, who already proved she deserved the Oscar nod for her charming Lizzie Bennet in Pride & Prejudice and delivered solid performances in Atonement, The Duchess and Never Let Me Go. Plus, A Dangerous Method is getting a lot of Best Picture buzz, which always benefits all the names involved in the project and while some take the risk of saying that Knightley's performance will be the equivalent to Portman's in Black Swan, I just say that she has one of the most interesting parts of the year and that I'm curious to see how she does on screen. By now, she's one of the most serious Oscar contenders in the Best Leading Actress category.
4.
Kirsten Dunst for Melancholia
As the winner of the Cannes Film Festival Award of Best Actress for her performance in Melancholia, Kirsten Dunst seems in a very comfortable position for the awards season. She has no nomination guaranteed for her work in Melancholia, no actress who works with Lars von Trier has, but the raves are sensational and describe her performance has a depressed bride who fears the end of the world with words like "convincing" or "exceptional" and "the best work of her career". In fact, Dunst always revealed acting talent since she was a child, specially for dramatic parts, and she has some shinning performances in her career like her works in Interview with the Vampire, Little Women, The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette or All Good Things, but the fact is that she never got the major award recognition. Now, due to the lastest von Trier movie, she may see the Oscar glory coming, but, in spite of being considered one of the most conventional movies from Lars von Trier, the director is always a controversial one, exploring unconventional themes in his film and saying unconventional things... Emily Watson was nominated for Breaking Waves, Björk was almost nominated for Dancer In the Dark (unfairly snubed) and Charlotte Grainsbourg got some buzz for Antichrist, so maybe Dunst is closer than we think, since she's a well-known face in Hollywood and Melancholia was a great acting showcase for her.
5.
Elizabeth Olsen for Martha Marcy May Marlene
Since Sundance Film Festival, Elizabeth Olsen have been receiving a lot of Oscar buzz for her portray of a damaged girl who's haunted by memories and an increasing paranoia after being part of a cult in Martha Marcy May Marlene. At first, I thought it was just a nice post-Sundance fase for Olsen, but the buzz around her kept strong during and after Cannes Film Festival and she may take the breakthrough performance spot of the Best Leading Actress Oscar nominees list. Unlike her sisters, the Olsen twins, Elizabeth is getting a lot of respect from the cinema industry being taken as a serious talented actress, which may play in her advantage when it comes to awards season. Olsen will need a strong independent awards season in order to keep the buzz strong, but I'm confident that she will have the same treatment Jennifer Lawrence had last year for Winter's Bone. But, there are a big couple of young talented beauties that may be seen in Olsen's seat: Felicity Jones, who was THE Sundance babe who starred Like Crazy, and Rooney Mara, who fills the haunted girl spot and stars in the mediatic and highly antecipated The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Olsen has a fearless competition for her spot, but right now, she's in advantage - she's the hit girl of the moment!
UNDER SERIOUS CONSIDERATION:
6.
Rooney Mara for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
After a mediatic and competitive casting process, Rooney Mara emerged as the chosen actress to portray Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher's adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, beating a big list of respectful A-list actresses, which created great expectations around Mara's acting abilities and around her performance. Last year, Noomi Rapace was a contender for portraying the same role in the Swedish adaptation of the book, but in spite of being terrific and more than playing Lisbeth Salander (she became Lisbeth Salander), Rapace didn't score an Oscar nomination, which make some folks aprehensive about Rooney Mara's Oscar chances. She has a lot to proof... I mean, in order to be in the Oscar race for a Best Leading Actress nomination, Mara must be as good or even better than Rapace's interpretation and hope the movie will be even more sucessful and got enough awards attention (which it's not difficult since The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is seen as a serious Best Picture Oscar contender). Mara was magnetic in her two scenes in The Social Network, so can you imagine how fantastic can be watching her during more than one hour? She looks the part better than Rapace and she is so photogenic, beautiful and sexually appelaing in such a weird way and such a kind of unreadable/mysterious eyes... I think she has everything to seduce the audiences and the AMPAS voters as Lisbeth Salander, but she will always have Noomi Rapace's performance ghosts around her and other young beauties performances as well!
7.
Felicity Jones for Like Crazy
One of this year's Sundance's babe, a beautiful beautiful woman and a charming actress, Felicity Jones must be taken under serious consideration due to her awarded performance in the indie romantic drama Like Crazy. She plays a British girl who falls in love for an American student, but they must live far from each other (she's in London and he's in USA), suffering the consequences of being far away from the loved one. At the first sight, Jone's part seems as heavy as Michelle Williams' Academy Award nominated one in Blue Valentine (maybe not so heavy) and once Jones received the Special Jury Prize for Acting - Dramatic, the same Mo'Nique received for her Oscar winning performance in Precious, Felicity seems to have good reason to smile for a possible Oscar nod. She has no major acting performances before Like Crazy but according to reviews, she's very intense in it and there's the famous and raved emotionally naked shower scene, that, according to some, was one of the acting higher points of the movie (the AMPAS loves breakthrough performances). But Jones has another Sundance girl on her way, Elizabeth Olsen for Martha Marcy May Marlene, and the Dragon Girl Rooney Mara, who are far more popular and mediatic than her, turning an Oscar nomination harder than what a Sundance win promises.
8.
Jodie Foster for Carnage
It has been a long time since Academy Award winner Jodie Foster received her last Oscar nomination (1994's Nell) and her most impressive performance since then was in 2007's The Brave One (great performance btw), but it seems that something is changing and maybe Foster is getting closer to an Oscar comeback with Roman Polanski's adaptation of the sucessful play God of Carnage in a movie simply called Carnage. Foster's part (Penelope in the movie, Veronica on stage productions) is a kind of a delicious one for any actor (Marcia Gay Harden received the Tony of Best Leading Actress in a Play in 2009 for her portray of this character), having a balanced mix of comedy and drama that requires good acting chops, which may call the Academy's attention for one of its past's darlings. The cast is only composed by four actors (Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz), which gives them enough space to act and Polanski is a brilliant director who knows how to get the best from each actor he casted. So, it's a wonderful role, a wonderful small cast, a wonderful director, an adaptation of an wonderful play... Foster just needs that the movie's reception will be wonderful enough to gain Oscar traction and put her on the race for a Best Leading Actress nomination.
9.
Charlize Theron for Young Adult
Already a Best Leading Actress Academy Award winner for 2003's Monster, Charlize Theron seems to be back at the top of her game by starring the promising Young Adult, a project directed by the talented Jason Reitman and scripted by Diablo Cody. There are no big details about this movie, but the the role of a writer who returns her home in small-town Minnesota, looking to rekindle a romance with her ex-boyfriend, who is now married with kids that was given to Theron seems juicy enough to land an Oscar nomination. Reitman already gave four Oscar acting nominations to his movie's cast members and it seems that Theron is a serious contender for the fifth one for Young Adult. There are other actresses who may be ahead in the race and that may deserve an Oscar nomination better than Charlize if we consider the body of work, but she very talented, she's beautiful and Hollywood loves her, so I think she has a couple of major factor on her side in this war... She only needs critical acclaim for her performance and for the movie itself in order to create huge Oscar traction around this project, because the AMPAS already proved its love for Reitman and its crush for Theron.
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