Best Actress

Fresh off playing a nosy teacher in an adaptation of Zoe Heller's Notes on a Scandal (Sept. 22), Judi Dench is ditching grades for gadgets, reprising her role as M opposite Daniel Craig's 007 in Casino Royale.... Felicity Huffman returns to her day job as harried mom Lynette Scavo on ABC's Desperate Housewives.... Keira Knightley isn't giving up her corset just yet: Still in postproduction on the two Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, the young Brit will follow up the Disney actioners with a role as a silkworm smuggler's wife in the 19th-century drama Silk.... In The Ice at the Bottom of the World, Charlize Theron will reacquaint Boys Don't Cry director Kimberly Peirce with the art of filmmaking after Peirce's long absence.... Though her Type A films has dozens of projects in development, Reese Witherspoon, rumored to have recently scored a record $29 million payday for the upcoming Our Family Trouble, is committed to just one role: as a pal to a pig-snouted Christina Ricci in the fanciful Penelope.

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