By Jill Serjeant

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Meryl Streep and Judi Dench got nasty. Kate Winslet stripped and Penelope Cruz padded her rear. But it is Helen Mirren and her prim silver curls who looks likely to reign on Oscar night.

Mirren's performance as Britain's Queen Elizabeth in "The Queen" has brought the British actress her widest acclaim in 40 years on stage, screen and television and she is considered a front runner to add Oscar gold to her clutch of more than 15 trophies.

"She's won every early award," said Tom O'Neil, columnist for www.TheEnvelope.com. "It has been a rare sweep that almost always results in victory on Oscar night. There is no serious challenger to knock her out."

To hear Mirren tell it, it is Queen Elizabeth herself who audiences have fallen for rather than her humanizing portrayal of the reserved British monarch during the extraordinary wave of public emotion that followed the 1997 death of Princess Diana.

"I think you fell in love with her, not with me. I just tried to make her as truthful to herself as possible," Mirren said in dedicating her Golden Globe win in January to Queen Elizabeth.

Mirren is competing for best actress against 14-time Oscar nominee Streep, who won a Golden Globe as a demanding fashion editor in "The Devil Wears Prada," Spanish beauty Penelope Cruz, who plays the mother of an abused girl in "Volver," and two fellow Britons -- Kate Winslet of the adultery drama "Little Children" and Judi Dench of the psychological thriller "Notes on a Scandal."

OSCAR AND OLDER WOMEN

If she wins, Mirren, 61, will take home her first Oscar and join a small group of actresses over the age of 50 to have won in a town where women past 35 are often dismissed as has-beens.

"Only one woman past age of 50 has won an Oscar in the past 15 years and that was Judi Dench for supporting actress in 'Shakespeare in Love,"' O'Neil said. "Oscar voters are babe-chasing older guys who treat the best actress race like a beauty contest."

Mirren has proved adept at playing both ends of the babe factor against the middle.

In "The Queen" she pursed her lips and aged up 20 years, confounding her image as a sultry, silver-haired woman with a penchant for racy jokes who has appeared nude in more than a dozen movies, including at age 58 in "The Calendar Girls."

Mirren has had a long career on British stage and television, ranging from Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" to a hard-bitten chief police detective in the television series "Prime Suspect."

Despite a 10-year marriage to U.S. director Taylor Hackford and two previous Oscar nominations in the best supporting actress categories, Mirren's profile has been much lower in Hollywood.

But that is changing due to the critical success of "The Queen" -- boosted by America's fascination with British royalty -- as well as Mirren's award-winning performance in the television production of an earlier royal, "Elizabeth I."

Mirren may have spent most of the past year wearing a crown but she shows few signs of craving the royal treatment.

"Win or lose, the bubble bursts and you're back to the nitty gritty of working," she told Reuters in an interview last month. "I'm honestly at my happiest in a cold rehearsal room with my polystyrene cup of tea."

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