Photo: The Weinstein Company/Sony Pictures/Sony Picture Classic/Fox Searchlight
What do we do with a best-actress race without Meryl Streep? After last year's win, she scratched with "Hope Springs." That leaves an open field, from the very young -- pretween Quvenzhane Wallis -- to the ingenues Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain to the grand dames Judi Dench and Emmanuelle Riva. Will Oscar go for sexy and screwed up, sexy and disabled, sexy and doomed -- or just plain tragically disabled? Here's the current crop of best-actress contenders.