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LOS ANGELES - There's the American Idol reject, the 10-year-old beauty pageant wannabe and the gentle giant who switched gears to play a paranoid African dictator.
Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls), Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) and Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland) were all first-time Oscar nominees today
in a field of fresh faces or performances that turn old notions about established stars on their heads.
In the acting categories for the Academy Awards, 10 people were thrust into Oscar limelight for the first time. That's fewer than the 14 newcomers nominated last year but still significant.
The actors were joined by two directors -- Mexican Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu for Babel and Britain's Paul Greengrass for the tense Sept. 11 hijack drama United 93.
"The great myth about Oscar is that they love to embrace favourites. In fact, they also welcome fresh-faced ingenues," said Tom O'Neil, columnist for the awards website TheEnvelope.com.
Inarritu, 43, a former radio DJ, took a year to film Babel, a sweeping four-strand story that takes place in Japan, Mexico, the United States and Morocco.
"I feel very honoured to be the first Mexican director to be nominated in the history of the Academy. It means we are breaking borders," Inarritu told Reuters.
Adriana Barraza and Japan's Rinko Kikuchi won their first Oscar nominations for their supporting actress roles as a Mexican nanny and a deaf mute schoolgirl in Babel.
"It is my first everything in America. I am honoured, nervous and very excited," Barraza said.
Hudson's dreams of stardom appeared shattered when she finished seventh on the US television pop star search American Idol in 2004. But the 25-year-old, who three years ago was working as a cruise ship singer, has stolen the Dreamgirls show as a member of a singing trio based on the story of The Supremes.
"I am blown away by this honour. I feel like I have reached the impossible," Hudson said today about her best supporting actress nod.
Eddie Murphy, better known as a comedy clown in movies like Beverly Hills Cop or the voice of Donkey in Shrek, showed off his serious side -- and singing chops -- to earn a best supporting actor nomination for Dreamgirls.
Spanish actress Penelope Cruz -- who once seemed destined to always play the sexy love interest -- won her first Oscar nod in the best actress category as the mother of an abused girl in Pedro Almodovar's Volver.
Whitaker, often cast as the innocent in movies like The Crying Game, played against type as the megalomaniac Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland -- which has already earned him a best actor Golden Globe.
Breslin, 10, joined the short list of child stars to be nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for her supporting actress role as a bespectacled wannabe beauty queen in the dysfunctional family road trip movie Little Miss Sunshine.
The list of Oscar newcomers was rounded out by best actor nominee Canadian Ryan Gosling for playing a drug-addicted teacher in Half Nelson and best supporting actors Mark Wahlberg for crime thriller The Departed and Jackie Earle Haley for Little Children.
The Oscars will be handed out in Hollywood on Feb. 25.
- REUTERS