LOS ANGELES (AP) – Three legends of entertainment and media are up against a pimp and a gay cowboy for the best-actor Academy Award.

“Capote” star Philip Seymour Hoffman is the front-runner for his remarkable embodiment of Truman Capote, capturing the author’s effete egoism and the dark conflicts that crippled him emotionally after writing the true-crime novel “In Cold Blood.”

Hoffman faces Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash in “Walk the Line,” David Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow in “Good Night, and Good Luck,” Terrence Howard as a pimp-turned-rapper in “Hustle & Flow” and Heath Ledger as a family man in a gay affair in “Brokeback Mountain.”

All five are Oscar-worthy performances, but in a year of tough-to-predict outcomes in the acting categories, Hoffman looks like the closest thing to a lock. Heaped with praise by critics, Hoffman won the Golden Globe for best actor in a drama and the lead-actor honor at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Rarely cast as a leading man, Hoffman has been a standout in character roles in such films as “Magnolia,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” “Boogie Nights” and “Almost Famous.”

Hoffman dug so deeply inside Capote’s skin that audiences quickly were in sync with the author’s effeminate, off-putting demeanor.

If Capote, who died in 1984, were around today, he likely would be horning in on the film’s acclaim, Hoffman said.

“He would probably be up here right next to me,” Hoffman said backstage at the Golden Globes. “I would say he would probably be critical because that was his life. And he’d probably point out all the things that were wrong, but he would also be happy that attention was being showered on him again. I think that was one of his character flaws.”

As country demigod Cash, Phoenix earned the Golden Globe for best actor in a musical or comedy.

It would be no stunner if Phoenix pulled off an upset Oscar win over Hoffman. Along with a fine emulation of Cash’s sonorous voice and freight-train guitar rhythms, Phoenix brilliantly walks the line between the singer’s joyous and gloomy sides.

Phoenix, previously nominated for supporting actor as the sniveling emperor of “Gladiator,” said he aimed to manifest the spirit of Cash without doing an impersonation.

“When I would go on stage and say, “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash,’ you’re not trying to say it like John does, but trying to capture what propelled him to say, “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash,’ when everybody already knew who he was,” Phoenix said. “What I was trying to do was really try to find the man behind all that.”

Ledger picked up his first Oscar nomination as part of the year’s most talked-about romantic couple. For its ardent depiction of a love affair between old sheepherding pals, “Brokeback Mountain” has become a cultural phenomenon, gay and lesbian groups embracing it and comedians mining it for an endless stream of gay-cowboy jokes.

A heartthrob whose career took off with the hip Shakespeare update “10 Things I Hate About You” and Mel Gibson’s “The Patriot,” Ledger scored a hit with “A Knight’s Tale” but followed with such duds as “The Four Feathers,” “Ned Kelly” and “Lords of Dogtown.”

Ledger surprised even his fans with “Brokeback Mountain,” mining unsuspected depths of brooding sentiment as a taciturn roughneck whose head and heart tussle over the love he feels for another man.

Playing Murrow in his TV showdown against Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Strathairn earned his first Oscar nomination in a venerable but under-the-radar film career that began with John Sayles’ 1980 debut “Return of the Secaucus 7.” His dozens of credits include “A League of Their Own,” “L.A. Confidential” and Sayles’ “Matewan,” “Passion Fish” and “Limbo.”

In “Good Night, and Good Luck,” Strathairn is a master of subtlety, presenting the fierce nobility, passion and indignation of Murrow within the confines of the newsman’s even-keeled temperament.

First-time nominee Howard, also part of the terrific ensemble in best-picture contender “Crash,” is the flash and flamboyance of the best-actor category. In “Hustle & Flow,” he plays a nickel-and-dime hood who enlists a lovably seedy posse to help him pursue a hip-hop career.

Like Strathairn, Howard has an impressive though low-key body of work, mostly as a supporting player in such movies as “Ray,” “Get Rich or Die Tryin’,” “Four Brothers” and “Dead Presidents.”

Howard delivers a blazing performance in “Hustle & Flow” as a man on the lower rungs of the drug-dealing and pimping business who musters all his street smarts to reach for an impossible dream.