TIME’s Great Performances

They lead with Jeff Bridges:

Marco Grob for TIME

Crazy Heart

There were plenty of props ‚Äî from the homegrown (potbelly) to the manufactured (glasses of booze) ‚Äî to help Bridges embody Crazy Heart‘s alcoholic singer-songwriter Bad Blake. He talks about putting “fire ants in my underpants” to simulate Bad’s hemorrhoids, and you almost believe it until you hear that familiar rocking, rolling laugh. Bridges, 60, has not yet won an Oscar, though this is his fifth nomination. That’s fine. “I get my jollies off the actual work,” he says. What mattered most to the role was the high-octane mix of hope and fear he imagined in Bad’s mind, which plagues him until he hits rock bottom. That’s when Bad’s bleak lyric “I used to be somebody/ Now I am somebody else” takes on a second meaning. “You don’t have to be who you think you are,” Bridges says. “That’s a wonderful thing, to think you can be reborn.

Pretty Carey Mulligan is next:

Marco Grob for TIME

Audiences and critics fell in love with her as Jenny, the precocious schoolgirl wooed by a businessman twice her age. But the makers of An Education weren’t so instantly beguiled; Mulligan, now 24, endured multiple auditions before she got the part. And after years of supporting roles in Brit films and TV series, she cringed when she watched herself at the center of a movie. “I thought I was completely awful,” she says. “All you can do is focus on yourself and become convinced that you’re the most boring person in the universe. But that’s who I was at the time. And the stuff I see in it that drives me crazy is what others think made the character real.” Having secured an Oscar nomination and a juicy role in Oliver Stone’s sequel to Wall Street (with current beau Shia LaBeouf), Mulligan now can go a little easier on herself. Stardom will do wonders for an actress’s ego.

And lovely Gabby Sidibe:

Marco Grob for TIME

Sandra Bullock worked for decades before receiving an Oscar nomination. Sidibe struck gold with her first film ‚Äî indeed, her first audition. “I wasn’t an actress until I was hired to be an actress,” says the Brooklyn native, 26, a psychology student when she tried out to play Precious Jones. Fat, illiterate and subject to horrifying domestic abuse, Precious could have been a simple conduit for audience pity; Sidibe invested her with power and nuance. Tough role to play, tough act to follow. Perhaps a change of pace? “I am obsessed with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, all those really, really funny women,” Sidibe says. “I’d like to do girl comedies. Without falling in love at the end. That always ruins it.”

Sandra Bullock:

Sandra Bullock

Marco Grob for TIME

The Blind Side
¬†

She’s been Miss Congeniality, one of Hollywood’s best-liked stars, since her 1994 breakthrough with Speed. But Bullock, 45, never won official acclaim until she played Leigh Anne Tuohy ‚Äî the Memphis, Tenn., matron who turned a lost black teen into a football star ‚Äî in the true-life smash The Blind Side. During the shoot, she recalls, “something clicked, that divine moment when preparation meets with letting go and you find yourself comfortable in another person’s skin.” Now Bullock has to get used to being a Best Actress nominee. “After two decades in Hollywood,” she says, “I am just thankful that I was allowed to work for two decades. I love what I have been lucky enough to do.”

And Christph Waltz!

Marco Grob for TIME

For three decades he made a living as an actor in films and theater and on TV. Then, with the role of the seductively slimy “Jew Hunter” Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, the 53-year-old Austrian made a sensation. The recipient of nearly every supporting-actor prize awarded in the past few months, Waltz is now the prohibitive favorite to win an Oscar. He’s taking the accolades not just as a reward, he says, but as encouragement. “The praise is like the start of a new process. All of a sudden ‚Äî with an emphasis on sudden ‚Äî it looks like it’s not a lost cause. It looks like I was not traveling on the wrong steamship in the wrong direction.” Waltz is now shooting the villain role in The Green Hornet, an action-comedy starring Seth Rogen. From now on, this consummate actor can travel first-class.

And Colin Firth:

Marco Grob for TIME

Ah, Mr. Darcy, the “man without fault” who courted Jennifer Ehle’s Elizabeth Bennet in the BBC’s 1995 Pride and Prejudice. The role marked Firth as a gently seductive actor but one who often loses the leading lady to a name higher on the marquee. How lucky he was, then, to get the role of George, a teacher mourning the loss of his longtime lover in A Single Man. Firth infuses this sad gay fellow with warmth, delicacy and a desperation that is all the more powerful for being so subtly expressed. “This is a very personal story about a man’s relationship with the world,” Firth says. “He has a decision that he’s made, to die, and life keeps trying to call him back.” It’s not just the role of a lifetime, well worthy of its Oscar nomination, but also a declaration that at 49, Firth is fully qualified for large, complex roles that he can play with force and nuance ‚Äî and, of course, without fault.