Dame Maggie Smith up for Screen Actors Guild awards

Dame Maggie Smith celebrates her 78th birthday at the end of this month

Dame Maggie Smith has received double recognition from the Screen Actors Guild, with award nominations for her roles in both Downton Abbey and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

She stands to pick up a further two prizes, as both productions are nominated for best ensemble cast.

Fellow Briton Dame Helen Mirren is also recognised, for her role in Hitchcock.

Argo, Les Miserables, Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbook lead the film field with four nominations each.

All of them are up for the outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture award - the SAG equivalent of a best picture prize - as is The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Comedy series Modern Family has the most nominations in the television categories - four in all.

The 2013 Screen Actors Guild awards will be presented at a Los Angeles ceremony on 27 January.

Find out the main nominees here

The organisation's nominations are often seen as key indicators as to which actors will be in the running for Oscars, the film industry's highest accolade.

Lincoln star Daniel Day-Lewis, Bradley Cooper from Silver Linings Playbook and Les Miserables lead Hugh Jackman are all in contention for the Guild's best actor prize.

John Hawkes' performance as a disabled man seeking love in The Sessions as Denzel Washington's as an alcoholic pilot in Flight complete this year's line-up.

Dame Helen's competition in the best actress category comes from Cooper's Playbook co-star Jennifer Lawrence, France's Marion Cotillard for Rust and Bone and Jessica Chastain for Zero Dark Thirty.

Javier Bardem earns a rare nomination for a performance in a Bond film

Naomi Watts rounds out the best actress contenders for her role as a mother caught up in the 2004 Asian tsunami in The Impossible.

Javier Bardem's villainous turn in Skyfall earns the latest James Bond film a berth in the best supporting actor category.

His competition comes from Argo's Alan Arkin, Tommy Lee Jones in Lincoln, Silver Linings' Robert De Niro and Philip Seymour Hoffman for The Master.

Dame Maggie, meanwhile, will need to see off Lincoln's Sally Field, Les Miserables' Anne Hathaway and The Sessions' Helen Hunt if she is to win the best supporting actress prize.

Nicole Kidman, recognised for her role as a sexually uninhibited Southern belle in The Paperboy, is the fifth nominee in the category.

Dame Maggie's competition for the best actress in a drama series award includes her Downton Abbey co-star Michelle Dockery, recognised for her role as Lady Mary Crawley.

Other Britons in line for TV awards include Homeland's Damian Lewis, up for best actor in a drama series, and Clive Owen, up for best actor in a TV movie or miniseries for his work in Hemingway and Gellhorn.

Kidman gets a second SAG nomination, for best actress in a TV movie or miniseries, for her role in the HBO production, which centres on the relationship between writer Ernest Hemingway and his wife, journalist Martha Gelhorn.

Veteran entertainer Dick Van Dyke will be honoured with a life achievement award at this year's awards, to be held at the Los Angeles Shrine Exposition Center.