This Angelina Jolie's second Academy Award nomination and the first Oscar nomination in the Best Lead Actress category for her role as Christine Collins in the movie "Changeling".

Angelina Jolie won an Oscar for her supporting role in Girl, Interrupted (1999).

The movie Changeling emphasizes the triumph of Christine Collins' campaign against the law-enforcement officials who shut her away in hopes of shutting her up. Angelina Jolie, rail-thin, plays Collins as a feral crusader for justice. In a largely expository role, John Malkovich portrays the Rev. Gustav Briegleb, Collins' partner in exposing the venality of the local police.

Angelina Jolie brings out the best in the movie "Changeling" and transcends the scripts limitations. She's spectacularly effective in the most intense blowouts, but Jolie really shines in the calm before the storm, the scenes (and there are many) when one patronizing male authority figure after another belittles her at their peril.

Mrs. Collins told her story clearly, stating that from the first she was convinced the boy was not her missing son . . .

She was subjected to an exhaustive examination by President Schweitzer, who wound up asking her what happened shortly before she was taken to the County Hospital.

"I was requested to appear before Captain Jones," she said.

"In the presence of several others, he said: 'What are you trying to do, make a lot of fools out of us all? Are you trying to shirk your duty as a mother and have the State provide for your son? You are just a fool.' "

-— Los Angeles Times, October 17, 1928, reporting on Mrs. Christine Collins at Police Commission Hearings

Clint Eastwood directs Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich in a provocative thriller based on actual events: Changeling. In the film, Christine Collins' (Angelina Jolie) prayers are met when her kidnapped son is returned. But amidst the frenzy of the photo-op reunion, she realizes this child is not hers. Facing corrupt police and a skeptical public, she desperately hunts for answers, only to be confronted by a truth that will change her forever.

Changeling tells the story of one woman whose invincible spirit and refusal to surrender brought down a corrupt police department and ushered in a new era of dignity and equality under the law.

Los Angeles, March 1928: On a beautiful Saturday morning in a working-class suburb, single mother Christine Collins (Oscar® winner Angelina Jolie) says goodbye to her nine-year-old son, Walter, and leaves for her job as a telephone operator. But when Christine returns to their modest home, she is confronted with every parent's worst nightmare: her son has vanished.

An exhaustive and fruitless search ensues, but Walter has disappeared without a trace . . . until five months later, when a child—claiming to be her boy—is returned by police who are eager to bask in the public-relations coup of reuniting mother and child. Dazed by the swirl of cops, reporters, photographers and her own conflicted emotions, Christine is persuaded to take the boy home. But in her heart, she knows he is not Walter.

As she pushes authorities to keep looking for her real son, Christine learns that in Prohibition-era L.A., women don't challenge the system and live to tell their story. Slandered as delusional and unfit, she finds an ally in community activist Reverend Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich), who helps her fight the city to look for her missing boy.

Facing corrupt police who question her sanity and a skeptical public hungry for a fairy-tale ending, Christine desperately hunts for answers. As she searches, she becomes an unlikely heroine for the poor and downtrodden who have been systematically abused and swept aside by the police state that has gripped L.A. Now, one woman's quest won't stop until she finds her son…unless those assigned to protect and serve silence her for good.

Angelina Jolie

Academy Award® and three-time Golden Globe winner ANGELINA JOLIE (Christine Collins) continues to be one of Hollywood's most talented leading actresses. Jolie's most recently released films were Robert Zemeckis' Beowulf and Michael Winterbottom's critically acclaimed A Mighty Heart, the dramatic true story of Mariane and Daniel Pearl. Jolie's performance in A Mighty Heart earned her nominations from the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild, Broadcast Film Critics and Film Independent's Spirit Awards.

Jolie was heard as the voice of Master Tigress in DreamWorks' Kung Fu Panda Kung Fu Panda, opposite Jack Black, and was recently seen in the fantasy-thriller Wanted, for Timur Bekmambetov. Upcoming films include the long-awaited adaptation of Ayn Rand's seminal novel "Atlas Shrugged."

Jolie's previous films include The Good Shepherd, directed by Robert De Niro and co-starring Matt Damon; Mr. & Mrs. Smith, co-starring Brad Pitt; Alexander, directed by Oliver Stone and co-starring Colin Farrell and Anthony Hopkins; and the action-adventure Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, with Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. She lent her voice to the animated feature Shark Tale, directed by the creators of Shrek, which also featured the voices of Will Smith, Robert De Niro and Jack Black. Jolie also starred in the Warner Bros. thriller Taking Lives, with Ethan Hawke. In 2003, she played the lead role in the action-adventure Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, the sequel to director Simon West's 2001 box-office smash Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and portrayed a relief worker for the United Nations in the provocative drama Beyond Borders.

In 2001, she starred in Original Sin, opposite Antonio Banderas for Gia writer/director Michael Cristofer. The previous year, she was seen with co-stars Nicolas Cage and Robert Duvall as car thieves committing their final heist in the smash hit Gone in Sixty Seconds, for producer Jerry Bruckheimer. She was also in the romantic comedy Life or Something Like It. Jolie's portrayal of a mental patient in Girl, Interrupted garnered her an Academy Award®, her third Golden Globe Award, a Broadcast Film

Critics Association Award, ShoWest's Supporting Actress of the Year Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role. The film, based on the true story by Susanna Kaysen, was directed by James Mangold and co-starred Winona Ryder.

Prior to that, she played a rookie police officer opposite Denzel Washington's veteran detective in the thriller The Bone Collector, directed by Phillip Noyce. She also co-starred in Mike Newell's Pushing Tin with Billy Bob Thornton and John Cusack. Playing by Heart earned her the National Board of Review's award for Breakthrough Performance–Female; this character-driven drama, directed by Willard Carroll, featured an all-star ensemble cast, including Sean Connery, Gena Rowlands, Madeleine Stowe, Ellen Burstyn, Gillian Anderson and Dennis Quaid.

The HBO film Gia earned Jolie critical praise as well as a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award and an Emmy nomination for her portrayal of supermodel Gia Carangi, who died of AIDS. Jolie also received an Emmy nomination for her role opposite Gary Sinise in director John Frankenheimer's George Wallace, a period epic for TNT about the controversial governor of Alabama. The film earned Jolie her first Golden Globe Award and a CableACE nomination for her portrayal of George Wallace's second wife, Cornelia.

Jolie also co-starred with David Duchovny and Timothy Hutton in director Andy Wilson's Playing God. Prior to that, she starred in Hallmark Hall of Fame's four-hour miniseries presentation True Women; directed by Karen Arthur, it was based on Janice Woods Windle's best-selling historical novel. Jolie also starred in Annette Haywood- Carter's much-acclaimed Foxfire and Iain Softley's Hackers.

A member of the famed MET Theatre Ensemble Workshop, Jolie trained at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and has also studied with Jan Tarrant in New York and Silvana Gallardo in Los Angeles.

Jolie has also received wide recognition for her humanitarian work. She was the first recipient of the Citizen of the World Award from the United Nations Correspondents Association, as well as the Global Humanitarian Action Award in 2005. In February 2007, Jolie was accepted by the bipartisan think tank Council on Foreign Relations for a special five-year term designed to nurture the next generation of foreign-policy makers. Jolie is also a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). She helped push through the Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act and founded the National Center for Refugee and Immigrant Children, an organization that provides free legal aid to asylum-seeking children.

2009 Best Lead Actress Oscar Nominations
81st Academy Awards 2009 Best Lead Actress Oscar Nominations

Anne Hathaway as Kym in "Rachel Getting Married"

As Kym, Anne Hathaway plays a self-absorbed recovering addict whose return home for her sister's wedding sparks a family conflict.

This is Anne Hathaway's first Oscar Academy Award nomination.

Melissa Leo as Ray Eddy in "Frozen River"

Melissa Leo plays Ray Eddy, an impoverished mother who becomes involved in a smuggling ring in an attempt to avoid losing her home.

This Melissa Leo's first Academy Award Oscar Nomination.

Meryl Streep as Sister Aloysius Beauvier in "Doubt"

Meryl Streep plays Sister Aloysius Beauvier, the strict head of a Bronx Catholic school who suspects that a new priest may be abusing one of her students.

This is Meryl Streep 15th Academy Award® nomination and the twelfth in the Best Lead Actress Oscar category.

Streep's other leading role nominations were for The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), Sophie's Choice (1982), for which she won the Oscar, Silkwood (1983), Out of Africa (1985), Ironweed (1987), A Cry in the Dark (1988), Postcards from the Edge (1990), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), One True Thing (1998), Music of the Heart (1999) and The Devil Wears Prada (2006).

Meryl Streep's supporting role nominations were for The Deer Hunter (1978), Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), for which she took home the Oscar, and Adaptation (2002).

Kate Winslet as Hanna Schmitz in "The Reader"

Kate Winslet plays Hanna Schmitz, a German woman in her thirties whose teenage lover is unaware of the dark secret in her past.

This is Kate Winslet's sixth Oscar nomination and the fourth in the Best Lead Actress Academy Award category. Her other leading role nominations were for Titanic (1997), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Little Children (2006).

Kate Winslet's supporting role nominations were for Sense and Sensibility (1995) and Iris (2001).