Playwright Edward Albee had originally wanted Bette Davis and James Mason for the lead roles. In what was perceived as an act of “courage,” Taylor aged herself to a frumpy fiftysomething woman by means of heavy makeup, weighing in at a hefty 155 pounds.

Size, or rather weight, matters, when the Oscar race is concerned. This year, the three frontrunners for the Best Actor Oscar are all performers in some form of disguise. To play the legendary musician Ray Charles (who was blind) in “Ray,” Jamie Foxx had lost over 30 pounds. As the Spaniard writer Ramon Sampedro, who fought for three decades to end his life with dignity, Javier Bardem is playing a physically immobile man who's much older than his own age. The brilliant Johnny Depp, who received a Best Actor nomination last year for plating an eccentric pirate in “The Pirates of the Carribeans,” is back in the Oscar race this year with “Finding Neverland,” as Scottish playwright J. M. Barrie, working in London on the magical children's play, “Peter Pan.”

In 2003, Oscar winner Charlize Theron did such a radical act of physical transformation–adding 30 pounds, wearing false teeth and heavy makeup–that she was barely recognizable in Monster. It did help that she played a flashy real-life role, serial-killer-prostitute-lesbian Aileen Wuornos. In 2002, Nicole Kidman did not gain or lose weight for playing Virginia Woolf […]

Size, or rather weight, matters, when the Oscar race is concerned. This year, the three frontrunners for the Best Actor Oscar are all performers in some form of disguise. To play the legendary musician Ray Charles (who was blind) in “Ray,” Jamie Foxx had lost over 30 pounds. As the Spaniard writer Ramon Sampedro, who fought for three decades to end his life with dignity, Javier Bardem is playing a physically immobile man who's much older than his own age. The brilliant Johnny Depp, who received a Best Actor nomination last year for plating an eccentric pirate in “The Pirates of the Carribeans,” is back in the Oscar race this year with “Finding Neverland,” as Scottish playwright J. M. Barrie, working in London on the magical children's play, “Peter Pan.”

In 1944, starred in Wilson, the biopic about U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, for which he won a Golden Globe and was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar.