Into the Wild cast is actors’ choice in guild nominations
Directed by Sean Penn, Into the Wild was also nominated for performance by its overall cast, along with the western, 3:10 to Yuma, the crime sagas American Gangster and No Country for Old Men, and the musical Hairspray.
Conspicuously absent from the guild field was the British romantic melodrama Atonement, which was shut out after leading the Golden Globe nominations a week earlier with seven nominations.
Hirsch was nominated as best actor for his role as fierce idealist Christopher McCandless, a graduate who abandoned a cosy life and took to the road for two years, coming to a tragic end in the Alaskan wilderness in the 1990s.
Other best-actor nominees were George Clooney as a conscience-stricken attorney in Michael Clayton, Daniel Day-Lewis as an oil baron in There Will Be Blood, Ryan Gosling as a social misfit in Lars and the Real Girl and Viggo Mortensen as a Russian mobster in Eastern Promises.
Nominated for best actress were Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Julie Christie as a woman fading from Alzheimer’s disease in Away From Her, Marion Cotillard as singer Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose, Angelina Jolie as journalist Mariane Pearl in A Mighty Heart and Ellen Page as a pregnant teen in Juno. Blanchett was also nominated for supporting actress as an incarnation of Bob Dylan in I’m Not There.
The awards will be presented on January 27 and televised on TNT and TBS.