VIGGO MORTENSEN
Best Actor nominee, Eastern Promises

In David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises, Viggo Mortensen plays Nikolai Luzhin, a Russian chauffeur and aspiring mobster living in London who has spent time in Russian jails and has the tattoos to prove it. His ambitions are complicated when he befriends a midwife (Naomi Watts) who is trying to find the relatives of a newborn whose mother, a Russian prostitute, died in childbirth. Her search reveals the underbelly of London's Russian mafia. To get into the part, Mortensen, 49, spent weeks in Russia, acquainting himself with Russian gangsters and learning all he could about the tattoos they sport.

Mortensen commented to the Daily News: "I talked to them about what they meant and where they were on the body, what that said about where they'd been, what their specialties were, what their ethnic and geographical affiliations were. Basically their history, their calling card, is their body."