Steven McIntosh
Entertainment reporter

Image source, ALLISON DINNER/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

After a slightly weaker field in 2023, this year's best actor category is extremely crowded and competitive.

The frontrunner is Paul Giamatti for The Holdovers, a film which sees him play a grumpy teacher who must stay in school over Christmas to supervise the pupils who aren't going home for the holidays.

Cillian Murphy is also in the race for his portrayal of theoretical physicist J Robert Oppenheimer, while Bradley Cooper could be recognised for his performance as composer Leonard Bernstein in Maestro.

Meanwhile, Rustin's Colman Domingo is a strong contender for his depiction of civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, and Jeffrey Wright could be recognised for his role as a frustrated author in American Fiction.

Other possible but slightly less likely contenders include Killers of the Flower Moon star Leonardo DiCaprio, Saltburn's Barry Keoghan, The Iron Claw's Zac Efron and Andrew Scott for All of Us Strangers.

Steven McIntosh
Entertainment reporter

Image source, Reuters

Back to this year's awards and the race for best actress is busy this year.

Lily Gladstone will likely be recognised for her role in Killers of the Flower Moon as an Osage woman living in 1920s Oklahoma who must deal with efforts by white settlers to take advantage of their land for oil.

Poor Things star Emma Stone will almost certainly be nominated for her performance as an infant whose brain has been transplanted into the body of a grown woman, who then goes on an adventure across the world.

Sandra Hüller could be recognised for playing a mother accused of murdering her husband in Anatomy of a Fall, while Maestro's Carey Mulligan is likely to be one of the few British nominees for her portrayal of Leonard Bernstein's wife Felicia Montealegre.

The Academy may well include Margot Robbie for Barbie, the monster box office hit which she also produced, Past Lives star Greta Lee for her role as a woman who reconnects with her childhood sweetheart, or Nyad's Annette Bening for her portrayal of record-breaking swimmer Diana Nyad.

There's also still a chance that The Color Purple star Fantasia Barrino could make it in, as could Priscilla's Cailee Spaeny for her portrayal of Priscilla Presley.

Tarik Habte
Live reporter

Image source, Shutterstock

We're under an hour away from this year's Oscars nominations so to whet your appetite here is a reminder of how last year's show went down.

The 2023 Academy Awards opened with host Jimmy Kimmel making a reference to the now infamous slap that happened at the 2022 ceremony.

But then, it was all about sci-fi extravaganza Everything Everywhere All At Once, which topped the nominations with nods in 11 categories. The film came out top in many of the evening's coveted categories including the big one - Best Picture.

Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis also picked up acting awards for their roles in the movie with Yeoh becoming the first Asian woman to win Best Actress and Quan becoming the first Asian man to win Best Supporting Actor since 1985.

Take a look back at all of last year's winners here.

Steven McIntosh
Entertainment reporter

Image source, Reuters

Several Oscars stalwarts released films this year and will almost certainly show up in this category - such as Martin Scorsese for Killers of the Flower Moon, and Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer.

There could also be recognition for Greta Gerwig for Barbie, Jonathan Glazer for The Zone of Interest and Yorgos Lanthimos for Poor Things.

Otherwise, spots could go to Justine Triet for Anatomy of a Fall, Alexander Payne for The Holdovers, Bradley Cooper for Maestro and potentially even Celine Song for her accomplished directorial debut Past Lives.

Two of the last three winners of best director have been women - although last year it was an entirely male set of nominees.

Image source, Getty Images

Just a little reminder you can watch the Oscar nominations being announced live by simply hitting the Play icon at the top of this page - although the feed isn't live just yet.

The nominations for all categories will be read out by actors Zazie Beetz and Jack Quaid from 13:30 GMT.

The full awards ceremony will take place on 10 March and be broadcast in the UK on ITV.

Image source, Getty Images

Officially, these are the Academy Awards, but they have been known affectionately as the Oscars, named after the statuette given to winners, for decades.

No one's quite sure how the golden trophy got the name Oscar, but there are several theories...

The late US Hollywood writer Sidney Skolsky claimed he gave the award its nickname and used it in his column in 1934.

Actress Bette Davis also claimed that the name derived from her observation that the backside of the statuette looked like that of her husband, Harmon Oscar Nelson.

But the most popular theory is one attributed to former Academy librarian Margaret Herrick, who declared that the golden statuette looked like her uncle Oscar.

The Academy officially adopted the nickname in 1939 and the rest is Hollywood history.

Steven McIntosh
Entertainment reporter

Image source, Universal

After a rule change a few years ago intended to widen the field, the best picture category now has a guaranteed 10 slots available.

There is general consensus that Oppenheimer, Barbie, Poor Things, Killers of the Flower Moon and The Holdovers will all score nominations.

Anatomy of a Fall, Maestro, The Zone of Interest, Past Lives and American Fiction are also seen as hot favourites and very likely to compete for the Academy's most prestigious prize.

But there are plenty of other contenders which could easily spring nominations in the top category, such as The Color Purple, Society of the Snow, All of Us Strangers and May December.

In recent days, there has also been a last-minute campaign - similar to the one that netted Andrea Riseborough a surprise acting nomination last year - for Origin to be recognised at the Oscars, after it missed out at a string of precursor ceremonies.

Steven McIntosh
Entertainment reporter

Image source, EPA / Getty Images

Oscars producers will be delighted that they have two box office smashes in the race this year - Barbie and Oppenheimer.

The Barbenheimer phenomenon, a viral trend which saw thousands of fans book tickets to see both films on the same day last summer, makes this year's Oscars far more accessible than usual.

While several Academy Awards ceremonies in recent years have recognised films which had little breakthrough with the general public, producers will be hoping Barbie and Oppenheimer's likely inclusion will result in a surge in interest and viewing figures.

Often, box office hits such as the Marvel films miss out at the Oscar nominations, as the Academy generally doesn’t see them as having much artistic merit.

Barbie and Oppenheimer, on the other hand, hit the Oscars sweet spot between commercial success and artistic merit, and voters will likely want to recognise both for helping keep cinemas afloat.

Image source, Getty Images

It’s almost time to find out who’s in the running to win one of those big gold trophies.

Which films are nominated to win an Oscar for Best Picture? Who is put forward to grab a coveted Best Actor or Actress award? How many nominations will ‘Barbenheimer’ collect altogether?

To the uninitiated, Barbenheimer is the nickname movie enthusiasts gave to the box office phenomenon of Barbie and Oppenheimer. Both films were released in the US on 21 July last year and are very different – one is a three-hour atomic bomb drama, the other is a comedy satire based on a famous toy. There’s not ‘Kenough’ time to explain how Ryan Gosling’s Ken became a media sensation.

There are other contenders of course: Paul Giamatti might be nominated for his portrayal as a 1970s history teacher in The Holdovers; Native American Lily Gladstone may have caught the academy’s attention in Killers of the Flower Moon; Colman Domingo has already received a Bafta nomination for civil rights biopic Rustin.

We’ll have to wait until 10 March to find out who the actual trophy winners are, but for now sit back and enjoy the nominations from 08:30 EST (13:30 GMT). Once the announcements begin simply hit the Play icon above and see if your favourite is nominated.