Daniel Day-Lewis is currently a frontrunner in the Best Actor Oscar race despite the nominations for the awards ceremony not being officially announced until Jan. 10. In the movie 鈥淟incoln,鈥� directed by Steven Spielberg, he portrays the sixteenth president as the South prepares to surrender at the end of the Civil War and he fights to abolish slavery before the southern states rejoin the federal government. 鈥淒ay-Lewis is far too wily an actor to simply give us a stooped, woebegone Lincoln and leave it at that,鈥� Monitor film critic Peter Rainer writes of Day-Lewis鈥檚 performance. 鈥淗e employs a high, wavering voice (apparently historically authentic) as a subtle, wheedling instrument.鈥� Other critics have also been impressed with the actor鈥檚 portrayal of the president. 鈥淭he experience of watching Daniel Day-Lewis in this role is nothing less than thrilling,鈥� critic Mick LaSalle wrote. 鈥淭his is Lincoln. No need for a time machine, there he is.鈥� The critic A.O. Scott agreed, writing that 鈥溾�� eases into a role of epic difficulty as if it were a coat he had been wearing for years鈥� His Lincoln speaks in a reedy drawl that provides a notable counterpoint to the bombastic bellowing of some of his allies and adversaries.鈥� Interestingly, another frontrunner in the Best Actor race is John Hawkes for his role in 鈥�The Sessions鈥� as the late writer Mark O鈥橞rien. Reviews for Hawkes have been similarly favorable, with Rainer calling it 鈥渁 remarkable performance.鈥�
For her role as Hollywood legend Katharine Hepburn, Blanchett won her first Oscar, for Best Supporting Actress, in 2004 for "The Aviator." "Cate Blanchett is even better [than Leonardo DiCaprio] as Katharine Hepburn, striking an excellent balance between mere impersonation and finely tuned psychological acting," then-critic David Sterritt wrote of the movie.
