Cillian Murphy, Carey Mulligan and Emily Blunt are among the stars tipped to land Oscar nominations on Tuesday.
Irish actor Murphy has been widely acclaimed for his performance as J Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist described as the father of the atomic bomb, in Christopher Nolan’s epic biopic Oppenheimer.
He is already nominated for a Bafta and an SAG award for the performance, has won a Golden Globe and is considered to be a frontrunner to take home the best actor Academy Award.
Murphy is likely to face competition from Paul Giamatti, who has also won plaudits for his performance as a cranky prep school teacher forced to remain on campus over the holidays with a troubled student in drama The Holdovers.
Other likely contenders include Bradley Cooper for his Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro, which he also directed, and Jeffrey Wright for his turn as a frustrated novelist who pens a book that propels himself into the centre of the hypocrisy he disdains, in American Fiction.
Maestro co-star Mulligan is expected to be nominated in the best actress category for her performance as Bernstein’s wife Felicia Montealegre.
She is likely to face stiff competition from Emma Stone for steampunk fairytale Poor Things, and Lily Gladstone for Martin Scorsese’s western crime thriller Killers Of The Flower Moon.
Other possible nominees include Margot Robbie for Barbie, Greta Lee for Past Lives and Sandra Huller for Anatomy Of A Fall.
Blunt, who plays Oppenheimer’s wife Kitty in Nolan’s film, has been widely nominated for supporting actress prizes and is tipped to add an Oscar nod to the haul.
Her main competition is likely to come from US actress Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who has won a slew of precursor prizes for her turn as a cook in The Holdovers.
Other possible contenders include Rosamund Pike for Saltburn, Penelope Cruz for Ferrari, Danielle Brooks for The Color Purple and Jodie Foster for Nyad.
Robert Downey Jr is considered the favourite to win the best supporting actor Oscar for his role as Lewis Strauss, the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, in Oppenheimer.
Other likely nominees include Robert De Niro for Killers Of The Flower Moon, Ryan Gosling for Barbie and Mark Ruffalo for Poor Things.
Ruffalo’s co-star Willem Dafoe is also in with a chance of landing a nod, as is Charles Melton for May December, Dominic Sessa for The Holdovers and Sterling K Brown for American Fiction.
The Oscar nominations will be announced at 1.30pm. They will be revealed by Atlanta star Zazie Beetz and The Boys actor Jack Quaid.
The Oscars will be hosted by Jimmy Kimmel on March 10th.
