Best Actress 2013: Shirley MacLaine, Elsa & Fred

(from top left clockwise) Shirley MacLaine poses with a come
hither look directed at Christopher Plummer; she cuddles
with a kitten MacLaine will later lock in a bedroom with
another cat and force into losing her feline virginity;
MacLaine tries to carry on a conversation with one of her
former lives, which has been reincarnated as an orange

Shirley MacLaine has been nominated six times for an Academy Award (five for lead Actress and one for writing, directing and producing a documentary about China), all in the course of a time period that is now smaller than the amount of years which have passed since she won her long overdue Best Actress Oscar for Terms of Endearment almost 30 years ago.  She flirted with the possibility of another nomination shortly thereafter with Madame Sousatzka, Steel Magnolias, and Postcards from the Edge.  MacLaine kept working consistently on the silver screen as well as TV, even having a career spike in the mid-2000s, taking on younger female costars like Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Aniston, and Cameron Diaz.  When none of those films hit big, her career quieted down slightly until last year's Bernie came rolling along.  Since then, she has appeared on popular series Downton Abbey and has a slew of films in preproduction.  She has wrapped a role in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, as well as Elsa & Fred in December.  Michael Radford (Il Postino) directed and cowrote the latter screenplay with Anna Pavignano, adapted from a 2005 Argentinian film about two people, played by MacLaine and recent Oscar winner Christopher Plummer, who fall in love in their twilight years.  On the crew is cinematographer Michael McDonough (Winter's Bone, Albert Nobbs), editor Peter Boyle (The Hours),  and costume designer Gary Jones (The Talented Mr. Ripley, The English Patient).  Filmed on a $10M budget in New Orleans and Rome, the movie will release sometime this year.  MacLaine has been in the news lately thanks to her daughter, who has just come out with a less than flattering book depicting her relationship with the batty transcendentalist mother.

Check out more Best Actress 2013 contenders