"She’s been Miss Congeniality, one of Hollywood’s best-liked stars, since her 1994 breakthrough with Speed. But Bullock, 45, never won official acclaim until she played Leigh Anne Tuohy — the Memphis, Tenn., matron who turned a lost black teen into a football star — in the true-life smash The Blind Side. During the shoot, she recalls, “something clicked, that divine moment when preparation meets with letting go and you find yourself comfortable in another person’s skin.” Now Bullock has to get used to being a Best Actress nominee. “After two decades in Hollywood,” she says, “I am just thankful that I was allowed to work for two decades. I love what I have been lucky enough to do.”
"Ah, Mr. Darcy, the “man without fault” who courted Jennifer Ehle’s Elizabeth Bennet in the BBC’s 1995 Pride and Prejudice. The role marked Firth as a gently seductive actor but one who often loses the leading lady to a name higher on the marquee. How lucky he was, then, to get the role of George, a teacher mourning the loss of his longtime lover in A Single Man. Firth infuses this sad gay fellow with warmth, delicacy and a desperation that is all the more powerful for being so subtly expressed. “This is a very personal story about a man’s relationship with the world,” Firth says. “He has a decision that he’s made, to die, and life keeps trying to call him back.” It’s not just the role of a lifetime, well worthy of its Oscar nomination, but also a declaration that at 49, Firth is fully qualified for large, complex roles that he can play with force and nuance — and, of course, without fault.:
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