Socially conscious spy yarn "The Constant Gardener" led the nominations Thursday for the British Academy Film Awards, with 10 nods including best picture.
The film's stars, Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz, both received acting nominations. The film's Brazilian director, Fernando Meirelles, also is up for an award.
Ang Lee's cowboys-in-love drama "Brokeback Mountain," which recently took best picture at the Golden Globes, had nine nominations. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, the movie's stars, are both up for acting awards, while Lee is nominated for best director.
"Crash," an edgy depiction of racial division in modern-day Los Angeles, also received nine nominations.
The winners will be announced Feb. 19, at a glamorous ceremony that is considered a pre-Oscars bellwether.
Nominees for best picture are "Brokeback Mountain," "The Constant Gardener," "Crash," George Clooney's McCarthy-era memoir "Good Night And Good Luck," and Truman Capote biopic "Capote."
"Pride and Prejudice" received six nominations, including best British film. "Good Night and Good Luck" — which has yet to open in Britain — also is nominated in six categories, including best actor, for David Strathairn and Clooney for best director.
In addition to "Pride and Prejudice," the best British film nominees are "The Constant Gardener"; Michael Winterbottom's freewheeling adaptation of an 18th-century novel "A Cock And Bull Story"; backstage Edinburgh Fringe comedy "Festival"; and clay-animation romp "Wallace And Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit."
The best-actor category pits Fiennes, Strathairn and Ledger against "Capote" star Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix, for his depiction of country legend Johnny Cash in "Walk the Line."
Best-actress nominees are Judi Dench for "Mrs. Henderson Presents," Charlize Theron for "North Country," Reese Witherspoon for "Walk The Line" and Ziyi Zhang for "Memoirs of a Geisha."
Best-director nominees are Lee, Clooney, Meirelles, Paul Haggis for Crash and Bennett Miller for "Capote."