She already has a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in her trophy case—for her over-the-edge performance in Girl, Interrupted—but this is the first-ever Spirit Award nomination for Angelina Jolie. The actress is up for Best Female Lead for her performance in the true-life drama, A Mighty Heart, for which she adopted a tricky French-Cuban accent and slipped on a prosthetic pregnant belly in order to transform herself into Mariane Pearl, wife of slain journalist Daniel Pearl. "I don't think there was ever a day I was sure of what I was doing," Jolie has said. "Only that I knew my heart was in the right place."

—Bronwyn Barnes and Maggie Chong