Actors

What does it say about racial politics in America that two days after the first African American president is inaugurated, Robert Downey Jr. is nominated for a supporting actor Oscar for essentially playing a part in blackface? Of course, the role in "Tropic Thunder" is comedic, a politically incorrect spoof on Method acting run amok. Downey plays an Australian actor so committed to the truth that he has his skin medically darkened so he can portray an African American commando.

Melissa Leo and Richard Jenkins are both respected veterans of the independent film scene, having played a full roster of supporting characters over the years. But their respective Oscar nominations for lead actress and lead actor -- a first for both of them -- have finally landed them on Hollywood's marquee.

Each year, the Oscar nominations result in a pleasure-pain split in Hollywood. There's the "You like me, you really like me!" jubilation for those whose work gets honored. Then there are the bruised egos of those who early on had been touted as Oscar shoo-ins but whose work wound up unheralded by academy voters.

It's been a big week. On Thursday, at an ungodly hour, the Academy Award nominations were announced. And two days earlier, there was some excitement on the East Coast as well. President Barack Obama was inaugurated on the Capitol steps, in front of a sea of people from every demographic. Viola Davis, a newly crowned supporting actress nominee for her role as Mrs. Miller in "Doubt," was watching the scene in tears at home in Los Angeles with her husband.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has forced the cruelest result upon Kate Winslet, nominating her for best actress for her indelible performance as a onetime concentration camp guard in "The Reader" but skipping over her other acclaimed performance as a suffering suburban housewife in "Revolutionary Road," a film that happened to be directed by her husband, Sam Mendes.

Barney the dinosaur, a beloved toddler's icon to some and a cultural punching bag to others, has taken on a new role: steppingstone. "Barney & Friends," filmed in a nondescript office building in suburban Dallas, has lately become a launching pad for child stars shooting along the career path blazed by Miley Cyrus and a generation of Mouseketeers before her.

Armin Mueller-Stahl didn't have to do a lot of research to play a former East German Stasi officer in the thriller "The International," which opens in theaters today. The 78-year-old actor, who possesses vibrant Paul Newman-esque blue eyes, was well acquainted with the secret police of the former socialist state. He lived under their repressive rule until 1980, when he emigrated to West Germany.

Of the five lead actress Academy Award nominees, Melissa Leo is probably the most bohemian, the least likely to live in a luxury hotel or employ a personal assistant or spend weeks worrying over her Oscar gown. Leo tidies her own house, cooks her own dinners and spends so much time caring for the young artists who routinely crash at her modest A-frame near Culver City that they all call her "Nana."

Take 26. That's the shot that director Darren Aronofsky used of Marisa Tomei in one of "The Wrestler's" pivotal dance sequences, one in which the 44-year-old Academy Award nominee gyrates and prances, flaunts and slinks -- largely in the nude -- across a real New Jersey club called Cheeques. That combination of Aronofsky's persistence paired with the time constraints of an indie film budget didn't allow for Tomei to have much reluctance about baring all.

It is hardly unusual for an actor to keep an eye on the camera while being photographed, but Anna Gunn's obsession seems to have less to do with vanity than research.