THE BRITISH actresses Julie Christie and Keira Knightley have emerged as early favourites in the forthcoming Oscar race - despite concerns that some American voters may be tiring of a constant stream of trophy winners from the UK.

Hollywood studios are pitching Christie, a still-striking figure at 67, against Knightley, 22, whose fame has largely hinged on her swashbuckling roles in the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy.

Yet critics have come over to Knightley as an actress after her touching if relatively brief role in Atonement, the film based on the second world war novel by Ian McEwan, which opens in the United States this week.

Until now Knightley has laughed off Oscar rumours, but last week studio straw polls put her in a strong position alongside Laura Linney, a previous nominee, for a dark comedy called The Savages, and the television actress Keri Russell for the comedy Waitress, and Christie.

For the veteran British actress, who won her first Oscar for the 1965 film Darling, an award for her role in the Canadian film Away from Her as an Alzheimer’s sufferer who gradually loses her identity could be a bittersweet victory. She has talked about taking lessons to improve her own failing memory. Christie told a Los Angeles radio station she did not know what was going on “but it makes learning my lines very difficult so I am quite happy to stay away from films and stage work”.

Christie, who admits to having had cosmetic surgery, said Sarah Polley, the director, had made her look older on screen than she does in real life. “I think there may have been a secret pact between the director and the cameraman not to give in to my vanity,” she joked.

Critics have warmed to the more “authentic” film star, saying she at last looks her real age and is all the more powerful for it.

Winning an Oscar is down to stamina as well as luck and talent, said Dame Helen Mirren, who treated last year’s contest “like an election campaign”, with constant dinners, parties and award ceremonies paving her way to the eventual triumph for her role in The Queen.

Hollywood studios collectively spend about £100m a year on Oscar campaigning, although this year the normal vulgarities have been muted by the writers’ strike. But one veteran campaigner said all the studios are haunted by “the British question”.

“There was a feeling last year, when Kate Winslet, Judi Dench and Helen Mirren dominated the best actress race and everyone else was Australian, that the Brits were everywhere. This might work against the contenders this year,” said the pollster.

All films bidding for an Oscar have to be released before December 31, after which the battle to win the support of 5,800 voters - many of whom rarely go to a public cinema - starts in earnest.

The 80th annual Oscar ceremony, to be held in February, will again be hosted by the television satirist Jon Stewart, who, like a number of increasingly desperate people in Hollywood, is currently unemployed because of the month-long writers’ strike.

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