Winslet and Staunton nominated for awards

The road-trip comedy Sideways led contenders today for the US Screen Actors Guild Awards with four nominations.

Four other films followed with three nominations: The Howard Hughes film biography The Aviator; Finding Neverland, tracing the creative roots of JM Barrie’s Peter Pan; Hotel Rwanda, the real-life tale of an innkeeper sheltering refugees from genocide and the boxing saga Million Dollar Baby.

All five of those films earned nominations for their overall casts, the equivalent of a best-picture prize for the guild, which represents Hollywood actors. Because of a tie in voting, the guild nominated a sixth film for best cast, the Ray Charles film biography Ray.

Jamie Foxx was nominated for three roles – as best actor in Ray, best supporting actor for the hit-man thriller Collateral and best actor in a TV movie or miniseries for the prison drama Redemption.

The guild’s other best-actor film nominees were Don Cheadle as hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina in Hotel Rwanda, Johnny Depp as Barrie in Finding Neverland, Leonardo DiCaprio as Hughes in The Aviator and Paul Giamatti for Sideways.

Nominated as best actress were Annette Bening as a 1930s London stage diva in Being Julia, Catalina Sandino Moreno as a Colombian woman who takes on a perilous job as a drug mule in Maria Full of Grace, Imelda Staunton as a housekeeper who moonlights as a back street abortionist in 1950s Britain in Vera Drake, Hilary Swank as a boxer whose life turns tragic in Million Dollar Baby and Kate Winslet as a woman who has erased memories of her ex-boyfriend in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Awards will be presented on February 5.