It's rare that an actor comes out of nowhere to earn an Oscar nomination. It happens -- see below -- but more often, we've known for years that a performer was destined for greatness. Here are our picks of those early roles that hinted we were watching future Academy Award favorites.

Best Actor Nominees:

= Daniel Day-Lewis (nominated for his performance as an oil tycoon in There Will Be Blood). The first movie that registered on the pop culture radar also won him an Oscar: 1989's My Left Foot, in which he played cerebral palsy sufferer Christy Brown.

= Tommy Lee Jones (nominated for his performance as the father of a murdered Iraq veteran in In the Valley of Elah). Jones is also a previous winner, for Best Supporting Actor in The Fugitive, but you can go back even further, to 1980's Coal Miner's Daughter, in which he showed us he was destined for greatness with his scrappy turn as Loretta Lynn's husband.

= George Clooney (nominated for his performance as the conflicted corporate attorney of Michael Clayton). Also a former Oscar winner, for Best Supporting Actor in Syriana, Clooney rocketed to fame with his performance in 1988's Return of the Killer Tomatoes! No, not really.

= Johnny Depp (nominated for his performance as the demon barber of Sweeney Todd). A first-timer at the Oscars, Depp refused to let us take our eyes off him in 1990's Edward Scissorhands.

= Viggo Mortenson (nominated for his performance as a gentlemanly mobster in Eastern Promises). Another newcomer to the Oscars, he was riveting as a brutal Marine commander in 1997's G.I. Jane.

Best Actress Nominees:

= Julie Christie (nominated for her performance as a woman with increasingly advanced Alzheimer's in Away From Her). She's been nominated three times before, and won a Best Actress award for 1965's Darling, but my favorite role of hers is her portrait of sweet-faced ignorance as the willfully unaware housewife in 1966's Fahrenheit 451.

= Marion Cotillard (nominated for her performance as troubled singer Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose). She's an unfamiliar face to many moviegoers, and a newcomer to the Oscars, but some of us remember her in 2003's Big Fish, where she takes a thankless "wife" role and makes it memorable.

= Laura Linney (nominated for her performance as the put-upon sister and daughter of The Savages). Linney, nominated for an Academy Award twice before, first made us sit up and take notice as the actress who helped maintain the reality-show fiction of The Truman Show (1998).

= Ellen Page (nominated for her performance as the pregnant high-schooler of Juno). A first-time nominee, she shocked us with her vengeful teen in 2005's Hard Candy.

= Cate Blanchett (nominated for her performance as the English monarch of Elizabeth: The Golden Age). She won a Best Supporting Actress for her work in 2004's The Aviator, but this year may well see her repeating her nom-but-no-win for a character she first played a decade ago: the queen herself in 1998's Elizabeth.

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MaryAnn Johanson (email me)
reviews, reviews, reviews! at FlickFilosopher.com

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