Put Philip Seymour Hoffman's characters in a police lineup and they might -- might -- look like distant cousins but not the same man.

Truman Capote, after all, little resembles Jon Savage, a bearded, shaggy-haired, slightly overweight Buffalo college professor whose living room is so stacked with books and papers that his sister jokes, "It looks like the Unabomber lives here."

Hoffman, a likely bet for an Academy Award nomination for 2007, remains one of the most versatile actors working today.

He leads a list that could easily include Samuel L. Jackson, Joaquin Phoenix, Viggo Mortensen, Josh Brolin, Toby Jones, Allison Janney, Evan Rachel Wood, Tom Wilkinson, Jeff Daniels, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Steve Zahn, Benicio Del Toro, Robert Downey Jr. and J.K. Simmons.

• Philip Seymour Hoffman -- Talk about a fabulous fall and early winter. Clean shaven, hair combed back and clad in suit and tie, Hoffman played a duplicitous, desperate real-estate broker plotting a holdup at his parents' jewelry store in "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead."

With the clock spun back to the early 1980s, he added a mustache and tinted glasses to channel Aliquippa native, University of Pittsburgh graduate and rogue CIA agent Gust L. Avrakotos in "Charlie Wilson's War."

Last to arrive, at least in Pittsburgh, is "The Savages" in which his life is as messy as his living room.

Jon and sister Wendy Savage discover their estranged father is about to be homeless in Arizona, is sinking into dementia and needs more care than they can provide. If that weren't enough, Jon's girlfriend is returning to Poland, and he ends up in makeshift traction after a tennis game.

• Christian Bale -- In the course of a year, he disappeared into an illusionist in 19th-century London, an American pilot shot down over Laos in 1966, a cash-strapped rancher who lost part of a leg while serving in the Union Army, and an earnest protest singer modeled after Bob Dylan.

If you're looking to assemble a rental or must-see list, put those titles on it: "The Prestige," "Rescue Dawn," "3:10 to Yuma" and "I'm Not There." Oh, and let's not forget Bale's the new Batman, too.

He tinkers with accents, weight loss, disabilities, powers and attitude and shows why he emerged from a reported field of 4,000 boys to star in Steven Spielberg's "Empire of the Sun" in 1987. He deserves to have "Oscar winner" attached to his name some time soon.

• Don Cheadle -- Everyone knows how he brought dignity, courage and cunning to "Hotel Rwanda," but two 2007 movies underscore his range: "Reign Over Me" and "Talk to Me."

In the first, he played a buttoned-down Manhattan dentist, husband and father whose world is transformed when he reconnects with his college roommate (Adam Sandler), a man whose wife and three children died on 9/11. Sandler isn't the only one changed here; Cheadle is, too, and he makes the movie work.

And then for something completely different: Cheadle as real-life D.C. radio legend Ralph Waldo "Petey" Greene Jr., an ex-con who believes in telling it like it is, sometimes to his boss's displeasure. Cheadle captures the power and passion of his voice on radio, TV and beyond in the explosive 1960s and '70s.

• Cate Blanchett -- Any woman who can pull off Bob Dylan and Queen Elizabeth I in the same season is the embodiment of versatility. We don't even need to mention the wayward art teacher in "Notes on a Scandal," the femme fatale in "The Good German" or Katharine Hepburn in "The Aviator" (the Academy Award voters already did).

• Queen Latifah -- In March, this actress played an HIV-positive wife and mother in "Life Support," a role that would earn her a Golden Globe as best actress in a TV movie or miniseries. A couple of months later, she was part of the exuberant ensemble of "Hairspray" as Motormouth Maybelle, host of the once-a-month Negro Day at a Baltimore TV station.

She appeared in "Perfect Holiday," in which her narrator could see only the beauty in the season. In the similarly named but entirely different "Last Holiday," she was a meek woman who -- told she was dying -- quit her job, cashed in her savings and flew off to a luxurious hotel in the Czech Republic, where she blossomed from Everywoman to Cinderella.

Starting today, the Oscar nominee for "Chicago" (she was prison matron Mama Morton) will co-star in "Mad Money" with Diane Keaton and Katie Holmes. She's a single mother of two boys who joins a scheme to filch worn-out greenbacks earmarked for the shredder.

• Freddie Highmore -- He will play twins Simon and Jared Grace in "The Spiderwick Chronicles," and we suspect he's up to the task.

Freddie, who will be 16 next month, recently lent his voice to a daemon in "The Golden Compass," played a musical prodigy in "August Rush," a boy who discovers a world of mysterious little people in "Arthur and the Invisibles" and Russell Crowe's character as a boy in "A Good Year."

He landed on many moviegoers' radar with "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Finding Neverland," and he's never dropped off.