Hobbits Join Battle of Baftas
Staff Reporter

LONDON (Reuters): The Lord of the Rings, directed by New Zealand's Peter Jackson and Australian Baz Luhrman's Moulin Rouge are going head-to-head with 12 nominations each for the Bafta awards, Britain's equivalent of the Oscars.

New Zealand-born Russell Crowe won a nomination for best actor in A Beautiful Mind, about a genius mathematician who succumbs to schizophrenia, which has already won him a Golden Globe.

In the Best Film category, The Lord of the Rings and Moulin Rouge will be battling it out with French romantic comedy Amelie, A Beautiful Mind and animated movie Shrek.

Australian and British talent featured highly on the list announced on Monday by actor Richard E. Grant at Bafta's London headquarters.

Nicole Kidman, who scooped a top Golden Globe award this year for Moulin Rouge, received a best actress nomination for ghost movie The Others.

The winners will be announced on February 24, a month before the Academy Awards. The Baftas moved to a February date last year to capitalise on the buildup to the Oscars.

British cinema could be scooping top Bafta awards with six nominations for Iris, director Richard Eyre's poignant tale of novelist Iris Murdoch's descent into Alzheimer's disease.

All the stars in Iris received nominations, with Dame Judi Dench - who lost out at this year's Golden Globes - getting one for best actress, Jim Broadbent for best actor, and Kate Winslet and Hugh Bonneville for best supporting actor.

Britain's Sir Ian McKellen received a best actor nomination for the wizard Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, while Broadbent and Dench had further nominations for supporting actors in Moulin Rouge and The Shipping News respectively.

Other British nominations included supporting actress nods for Dame Maggie Smith and Helen Mirren in Robert Altman's Gosford Park, a satire on the British class system.

Other nominees for best actress included Golden Globe winner Sissy Spacek for In the Bedroom, Audrey Tautou in Amelie and Rene Zellweger for Bridget Jones' Diary.

Kevin Spacey in The Shipping News and Tom Wilkinson for In the Bedroom were also nominated for best actor.

Gosford Park received nine nominations, as did Amelie.

Smash hit Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone - released as Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone in the United States - received seven nominations and Shrek got six, including Eddie Murphy for best supporting actor.

"I am delighted to see such a broad international sweep as well as some of the best in British talent represented at this year's nominations," said Bafta chairman Simon Relph.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Planet of the Apes received a nomination for best make-up and hair.

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