Imelda Staunton, "Vera Drake"
Career nominations: 1

The 49-year-old character actress, best known as the excitable Nurse in 1998's "Shakespeare in Love," proves that you don't have to be either young or beautiful to turn in one of the most trenchant performances of the year, as a middle-class housewife and mother who becomes an abortionist in 1950s England. Her performance has made Staunton a critics' darling this year on both sides of the Atlantic and earned the veteran her first Oscar nomination. She's already won the British Independent Film award as well as top honors from the Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Toronto and Seattle film critics associations and the National Society of Film Critics and Venice Film Festival.

(Simon Mien / Fine Line Features)