LONDON: Hollywood stars Rachel Weisz, Jude Law, Keira Knightley and Gillian Anderson were nominated on Monday for Laurence Olivier Awards, British theatre’s top accolades.
Anderson and Weisz are contesting the best actress category for their turns in A Doll’s House and A Streetcar Named Desire respectively, and are up against Imelda Staunton (Entertaining Mr Sloane), Juliet Stevenson (Duet For One) and Lorraine Burroughs (The Mountaintop).
Knightley was nominated for a best supporting actress award for The Misanthrope, her West End debut.
In the best actor category, Law is shortlisted for his portrayal of the title role of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, while James McAvoy, also best known for his films, is nominated for Three Days of Rain.
With six nominations apiece are Lucy Prebble’s Enron about the collapsed U.S. energy trading company, and Jerusalem, Jez Butterworth’s portrayal of less-than-idyllic life in rural England.
The Royal Court Theatre garnered the most nominations with 15, followed by the Donmar with 10 and the National Theatre with nine.
London’s West End enjoyed a bumper 2009, with attendances rising 5.5 percent to 14.3 million and revenues 7.6 percent higher than 2008 at 505 million pounds ($790 million).
Olivier theatre awards by Hollywood was first posted on February 8, 2010 at 9:48 pm.
