Awards Features

Thesps such as Daniel Day-Lewis ("There Will Be Blood"), Marion Cotillard ("La Vie en rose"), Amy Ryan ("Gone Baby Gone"), Javier Bardem ("No Country for Old Men") and Laura Linney ("The Savages") nonetheless managed to charm critics and the Academy alike while walking in the shoes of potentially overbearing personas. Their respective characters could be categorized as manic and over the top, but the performances never were.

Bardem stresses the importance of a pic's director in staying on the mark -- or, in the case for "No Country," the directors. Helmers Ethan and Joel Coen kept the path lit as Bardem put forth a portrayal of one of the more unique screen villains in recent memory. Anton Chigurh is crazy by any standards, but Bardem didn't want him to be an off-the-wall loon. Subtlety was required.

"I really relied on them," Bardem says. "In the book, there's no physical description of my character. As an actor, I get lost a lot of times. I'm hired to get lost, but you're protected once you get lost, and that's what the Coens are good at."

As famed French vocalist Edith Piaf, a very youthful Cotillard had to depict an icon over a 30-year stretch of time. The benefits of screen makeup helped bring the illusion to life, but heartache and alcoholism dominated much of Piaf's career, building the grandiose nature of the character throughout the course of the film.

For Cotillard, preparation was key to maintaining believability in the portrayal.

"It was a very creative time for all of us," she says. "It took a little while to find the right balance between the makeup and light, and as soon as we saw the pictures, we knew it was OK."

Often mentioned in the same breath with these larger-than-life performances is Day-Lewis, who carries "There Will Be Blood" on his shoulders with a grand and epic turn that, in lesser hands, could've easily given way to overacting. The thesp, who now has four Oscar noms and a win, invented Daniel Plainview as an oilman who is extremely reluctant to raise his voice unless provoked. The character's demons are deep inside his soul, not so much verbally exorcised.

Newsweek's David Ansen says Day-Lewis' tendency to know his boundaries is part and parcel of his work ethic.

"He immerses himself in these parts and lives within the characters so deeply," he says. "He literally becomes these people and understands them so well that he doesn't go over that line. This role is one of his more theatrical portrayals, but as the character becomes more alcoholic -- which isn't discussed but is clearly there -- his performance gets kind of wilder. It all culminates in that fantastic scene in the bowling alley, which could have gone over the top, but seems exactly right."

Another performer perhaps not so obvious in this company is Linney, nominated for her performance as Wendy Savage in "The Savages." Faced, along with her brother Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman) with the unpleasant prospect of placing her dementia-stricken father in a nursing home, Wendy is a character that might have quickly become lost in the surrounding drama. But director-screenwriter Tamara Jenkins says Linney had a great intuitive sense about the dynamics of the role.

"You have some sort of little meter inside your brain that is helping you assess how this is all going," Jenkins explains. "I think you develop that as you go along, but there's also an invisible dialogue going on all the time between the director and an actor. This is a character that has lots of extremes, and the whole environment is pushing both of the lead characters emotionally, pushing all these buttons and feelings, but Laura was very confident."