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Five actresses compete for coveted Oscar

Chastain is up for the Oscar for her role in Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty. Chastain’s career has taken off in the last few years.

In Terence Malik’s Tree of Life, she played a young wife at life's mercy.

In Tate Taylor's drama The Help, she's an outcast in the 1960s white South who stands with an African American housekeeper abused by a former employer.

In Zero Dark Thirty, she plays Maya, a CIA operative who spends ten years on the search for Osama Bin Laden.

Chastain's character is reclusive, obsessive and aloof, and, some say, lacking in depth. Her persona, they say, was never fleshed out and that could cost her the award.

That leaves Jennifer Lawrence. In Silver Linings Playbook, she is Tiffany, a woman with emotional issues who befriends a man suffering from bipolar disorder.

Lawrence has already won two major awards for the role.

Her career took off two years ago with a nomination for her performance in Winter’s Bone.

She played a teenager who struggles to keep her poverty-stricken family together.

Lawrence went on to play Katniss Everdeen in the The Hunger Games, a role that won her international recognition.

As Tiffany, Lawrence is witty and captivating. But Oscar voters will have to decide if a comedic role deserves one of the most coveted awards of the year.