Oscars wild

The odds are in George Clooney's favour to come away from this weekend's 78th Academy Awards with an Oscar tucked under his arm. With nominations in four categories, he has more chances of winning something than most - as long as his past doesn't come back to haunt him.

Voters might think twice about putting a cross against his name if reminded of his performance as a "lip synching transvestite" in body-parts-for-sale thriller The Harvest or his encounters with "the vegetables of doom" in Return Of The Killer Tomatoes.

They might not be able to forgive or forget seeing him as a drug-dealing surfer in Red Surf or in the Crippen High School-set serial killer movie Return To Horror High.

Clooney, as he'd be the first to admit, has several cinematic skeletons in his cupboard, accumulated during the years he spent striving for the big time. He's admitted that pulling on the cape and tights as the masked superhero in the badly-received Batman And Robin was a mistake.

All credit to him for persevering to become the conscience of Hollywood with two politically-minded movies with nominations for best supporting actor for Syriana, as well as best director, picture and original screenplay (with Grant Heslov) for Good Night, And Good Luck.

The Oscar nods are "much more sweet because between us we've been involved in some of the worst projects in the history of Hollywood," according to producer Grant Heslov, who shares the screenplay credit with his buddy Clooney. "There was a time I was acting in a film called Dangerous Curves, which was basically a porno film with no sex, and at the same time George was filming Return Of The Killer Tomatoes," he says.

Many actors have a horror or sex movie that they'd gladly see omitted from their CV. It's not easy for today's stars to live down yesterday's mistakes. Video and now DVD along with screenings on TV mean that work they'd rather forget is readily available so that the past regularly comes back to haunt them.

There's many a secret this year's nominated stars would prefer hidden away. The race for the best actor Oscar boils down to Heath Ledger, for gay cowboy picture Brokeback Mountain, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, for his uncanny portrait of writer Truman Capote in Capote.

A spell in Aussie soap Home And Away isn't the only embarrassing thing from Ledger's past. How about a role in a 1997 film called Paws in which Billy Connolly provided the voice of a dog?.

Hoffman made his film debut in 1991 as a backstabbing classmate in Scent Of A Woman. Before that he'd appeared in the Polish movie Szuler and a documentary film, Triple Bogey On A Par Five Hole, about a family of children who were murdered on a golf course.

Joaquin Phoenix, nominated as singer Johnny Cash in Walk The Line, selects his roles with care these days. Back in the 1980s, as Leaf Phoenix, he was guesting in TV series such as Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, The Fall Guy and Murder She Wrote.

Nobody will hold it against best supporting actor nominee Jake Gyllenhaal for playing Billy Crystal's son in City Slickers. After all, he was only young.

So was Pride And Prejudice best actress nominee Keira Knightley, now one of the hottest screen actresses on both sides of the Atlantic, when she made an uncredited appearance as a music school student in Thunderpants, "a work of fart" about a schoolboy whose ability to break wind aids his dream of becoming an astronaut. Not exactly Jane Austen, is it?.

Charlize Theron already has a best actress Oscar for Monster. Put cheap horror movie Children Of The Corn III in your DVD and you might catch a glimpse of a young Charlize as Young Woman.

Both Theron and Frances McDormand, up for Oscars for sexual harassment drama North Country, have committed a cinematic sin more recently with futuristic action fantasy Aeon Flux. The financial reward can have been the only reason these two acclaimed actresses showed their face in this mess. Some might go as far as to say they deserve to have their Oscars taken away for subjecting audiences - as few as they were - to such rubbish.

Another best actress hopeful, Felicity Huffman, is a big hit in TV's Desperate Housewives but was fired from an earlier TV show, Thunder Alley. She's come a long way since playing The Wheel Of Fortune Girl in Things Change 15 years ago.

Rachel Weisz, heavily tipped to win best supporting actress for The Constant Gardener, demonstrated her versatility early in her career by switching from Junior Executive in a forgotten sci-fi thriller Death Machine to a prestigious Bernardo Bertolucci drama Stealing Beauty.

The current batch of nominees aren't alone. Director and star Kevin Costner saw his western, Dances With Wolves, take seven Oscars - seven more than his 1974 sex comedy Sizzle Beach.

Past winners include actors who, in non-award winning roles, have been attacked by bees (Michael Caine in The Swarm), engaged in kinky sex (Kim Basinger in 9-and-a-Half Weeks), played a teenage martial arts prodigy (Hilary Swank in The Next Karate Kid) and, perhaps the biggest crime of all, been a regular in BBC1's Casualty (Brenda Fricker, a winner for My Left Foot).

A few commit film crimes after winning. If voters had known that Ben Affleck would go on to make movies such as Gigli and Pearl Harbour, they'd have thought twice about giving him and Matt Damon the best screenplay Oscar for Good Will Hunting.

Film-maker James Cameron was famously "top of the world" after taking home a record 11 Oscars for Titanic in which an iceberg was the danger in the water, not the mutant flying fish in his directorial debut Piranha II: The Spawning.

If too many Oscar voters had remembered that cheap horror sequel, his chances of winning might have sunk as rapidly as the luxury liner.

* Live coverage of The 78th Annual Academy Awards ceremony is on Sky Movies 1 from 12.05am tomorrow.