The Last Station

Michael Hoffman

American filmmaker Michael Hoffman began his career as a director with the 1982 Privileged, which was also the debut feature of actors Imogen Stubbs and Hugh Grant (who back then was credited as 'Hughie' Grant). His subsequent features have included Restless Natives (1985), Promised Land (1987), Some Girls (1988), Restoration (1995), One Fine Day (1996) and A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999).

Christopher Plummer

Canadian born actor Christopher Plummer is a veteran of almost 180 films and television plays. An actor of considerable screen presence and range, he can be equally convincing as a kindly authority figure and a murderous pyschopath (check out Daryl Duke's too rarely seen and underrated The Silent Partner for terrifying evidence of the latter). Key roles in his film and TV career have included the title role in the 1964 TV version of Hamlet alongside Robert Shaw and Michael Caine, Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music (1965), Field Marshal Rommel in The Night of the Generals (1967), Squadron Leader Colin Harvey in Battle of Britain (1969), the Duke of Wellington in Waterloo (1970), Rudyard Kipling in John Huston's The Man Who Would be King, Capt. 'Uncle' Sinclair in Aces High (1976), Herod Antipas in Jesus of Nazareth (1977), Sherlock Holmes in Silver Blaze (1977) and Murder by Decree (1979), the psychotic Harry Reikle in The Silent Partner (1978), Col. Herbert Kappler in The Scarlet and the Black (1983), the Shakespeare-quoting General Chang in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), Dr. Goines in Twelve Monkeys (1995), Abraham Van Helsing in Wes Craven's Dracula 2000, Aristotle in Alexander (2004) and Dean Whiting in Syriana. Although a multi-award winner in years past, his first Oscar nomination was this year for The Last Station.

Helen Mirren

Dame Helen Mirren is one of the UK's most respected screen and stage actresses and a veteran of over a hundred screen roles. Her film debut was a small role in Don Levy's mind-bending Herostratus (1967) and appeared in a number of key British films in the 1970s and 80s, including Ken Russell's Savage Messiah (1972), Lindsay Anderson's O Lucky Man! (1973), John MacKenzie's The Long Good Friday (1980), Dennis Potter's Blue Remembered Hills (1979) and Peter Greenaway's The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover (1989). Her role as DCI Jane Tennison in the TV police drama Prime Suspect made her a household name and was one she was to repeat eight times more, but it was her lead role in The Queen (2006) that proved her biggest award winner, landing her her first and to date only Oscar, though like Christopher Plummer she was nominated this year for The Last Station.

Watch the trailer for The Last Station