Star-crossed

Big names, cult favorites stretch their skills across a galaxy of roles this season

Forget pigeonholes

stars roles are scattered across the sky Nicole Kidman

The muscular send-off for the movie holiday season was the soulless technological breakthrough Beowulf, whose computerized "performance-capture" technique wrapped its actors in the digital equivalent of cheese-cloth.

That's actually a splendid irony, for the winter holidays' cinematic strong suit is sure to be the flesh-and-blood performances of America's always-expanding pool of acting talent. In Enchanted, Amy Adams leaps from being an independent-film darling to the sparkling centerpiece of a Disney super-production. This Christmas features a host of engaging African-American actors, whose credits range from specialty cinema to HBO (Delroy Lindo, Idris Elba), bringing unexpected depth and warmth to a mainstream family comedy-drama.

As December rolls around, movie-lovers can anticipate a cornucopia of top performers popping out from packages of wildly differing shapes and sizes. Box-office draws who are also fascinating actors, such as Nicolas Cage and Johnny Depp, will once again try to prove that personality and even weirdness may be a major plus for big-studio releases like Depp's Sweeney Todd and Cage's National Treasure: Book of Secrets. Nicole Kidman will continue to leap from intimate to epic challenges, this time in the same month, when she stars both in the fractious family saga Margot at the Wedding and the potential fantasy blockbuster The Golden Compass, based on the first volume in Philip Pullman's series The Dark Materials.

No matter how far and how swiftly Hollywood goes down the digital road, producers of big-budget extravaganzas as well as intimate character dramas know that audiences respond above all to great performances. They've become more wide-ranging than ever in their casting choices, just as today's actors are more flexible and sensible about the vast range of honest work to be done in the popular art of the movies. Cage has shown it's just as honorable for him to be a genial crowd-pleaser in the National Treasure movies as it was for him to wring anguished tears in Leaving Las Vegas.

Of course, there's still a gap between American sweethearts like Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, and actors' actors like Philip Seymour Hoffman, even after they've won Oscars as Hoffman did for Capote. But if Hanks and Roberts nailed the leads in the forthcoming Charlie Wilson's War, Hoffman and Adams snagged sizable supporting parts. Plus, this year Hoffman has already shown he can make an art-house hit out of a sweaty New York suspense film, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. And, along with Laura Linney, Hoffman may win an even bigger audience come December with the tart and moving comedy, The Savages, about two siblings struggling with the care of their Parkinson's-afflicted father (Philip Bosco).