Sentiment will be on the side of Hal Holbrook, who is 83 and receives his first Oscar nomination for his touching portrayal of a lonely widower in Into the Wild.
The other first-time nominee is Casey Affleck for his revelatory performance as the admirer-turned-killer in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. The only former winner is Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote, 2005) as a wily CIA agent in Charlie Wilson's War.
The two non-US nominees are Tom Wilkinson, as a lawyer suffering a crisis of conscience in Michael Clayton, and the hot favourite, Javier Bardem, as one of cinema's most cold-blooded killers in No Country for Old Men. The standard is higher than in any acting category this year, but Bardem has the edge over Holbrook.
THE ODDS
1/20 Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men)
12/1 Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
18/1 Hal Holbrook (Into the Wild)
40/1 Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton)
40/1 Philip Seymour Hoffman (Charlie Wilson's War)
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