David Lee/Universal Studios- Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There
- Ruby Dee, American Gangster
- Saoirse Ronan, Atonement
- Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone
- Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton
The Answer B!tch Leslie Gornstein Says: Ruby Dee, of course
She's old. She's venerable. She has no Oscar to date. Cate already has one. Amy Ryan may have really huge chops (The Wire, anyone?), but she's new to the elite nominees club. The Academy probably sees her as too much of an upstart to get a statue just yet. Sure, Mira Sorvino was also a newcomer when she got her Oscar, but she was a fresh face, see, not an upstart. They had huge publicity machines behind them and sexy magazine covers that upped their glamour quotient to Academy-appropriate levels of legendariness. So anyway, Ruby Dee it is.