AND THE WINNER IS…

Can you identify the person who might well receive a lead acting nomination this year for portraying a character who (a) wants no long-term ties to people or possessions, (b) prefers one-and-done dealings and sex over meaningful relationships, (c) can’t bear to stay in any one place for very long, and, above all, (d) only feels alive when on the move? If you named George Clooney in “Up in the Air” you’d be only half correct, because the same is also true of Michelle Monaghan in “Trucker.”

At this point, many of you are probably saying, “Who?!” That’s understandable.

Whereas Clooney is a household name, Monaghan is still largely unknown by name, if not face — most remember her as “the girl” in “Mission: Impossible III” (2006), “Gone Baby Gone” (2007), “The Heartbreak Kid” (2007), “Made of Honor” (2008), and/or “Eagle Eye” (2008). Whereas Clooney gave his performance for an Oscar-nominated director, Monaghan gave hers for a first-time director (James Mottern). Whereas Clooney’s film was a months-long production financed by the oldest studio in Hollywood for $25 million, Monaghan’s was made in just 19 days with just $1.5 million cobbled together from three different production companies. And whereas Clooney’s film now has that studio’s formidable P.R. apparatus orchestrating its distribution, marketing, and awards campaign, Monaghan’s has only the small distributor that took a chance on it — a year-and-a-half after it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 24, 2008 (I was there) — and Monaghan herself.

Consequently, Monaghan’s awards prospects really comes down to a simple maxim: if people check out her performance, she’ll be nominated; if they don’t, she won’t. (As Roger Ebert, who gave “Trucker” four out of four stars, wrote in his review, “Her performance clearly deserves an Oscar nomination.”) Monterey Media, working in conjunction with 42 West, seems to understand this — “Trucker” was one of the first screeners of the year to go out to bloggers and, much more importantly, to members of the Academy’s acting branch, which will determine the five best actress nominees.

At the moment, Monaghan is somewhere in the pack of actresses believed to be competing for a chance to join Helen Mirren (“The Last Station”), Carey Mulligan (“An Education”), Gabby Sidibe (“Precious”), and Meryl Streep (“Julie & Julia”) at the Oscars. Her competition includes Emily Blunt (“The Young Victoria”), Sandra Bullock (“The Blind Side”), Abbie Cornish (“Bright Star”), Marion Cotillard (“Nine”), Penelope Cruz (“Broken Embraces”), Zooey Deschanel (“500 Days of Summer”), Maggie Gyllenhaal (“Crazy Heart”), Saoirse Ronan (“The Lovely Bones”), and Audrey Tautou (“Coco Before Chanel”). It’s still anyone’s guess which of these ladies will prevail, but Monaghan would seem to be the ultimate dark horse of the group.

Earlier this month, I spoke with Monaghan — for the first time since the night that “Trucker” premiered — about her life, career, and the performance that could change both. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO OUR INTERVIEW, which includes discussion of the following topics:

• How she moved from journalism, to modeling, to acting… and how journalism’s “5 W’s” have made her a better actor.
• Why she has taken roles as working class women in several films, most notably “North Country” (2005), “Gone Baby Gone” (2007), and now “Trucker” (2009) — “You know, most of the roles that we read in Hollywood as women are glorified Barbie dolls, in a way, you know, that are perfect, you know? And that’s fun every now and then ’cause we all sort of want to be like that, I guess, once a month or whatever, you know? But sometimes they’re not all that interesting, really.”
• How she is rarely unrecognized in public (when she is it’s often by someone who mistakes her for Liv Tyler or Ellen Pompeo), and why she loves that.
• Why a wild horse served as a “huge inspiration” for her performance in “Trucker” — “I saw Diane as a mustang… you couldn’t corral her… they’re very strong… people were trying to constantly pin her down and back her into a space… I ended up putting a mustang tattoo on the back of my shoulder… it’s on my truck door… my handle ended up being ‘Black Beauty’… and in the physicality I think it maybe came out as well.”
• The tw0-and-a-half weeks that she spent at a trucking school learning to drive an 18-wheeler and going on short hauls with an instructor (who reassured her by saying, “Michelle, you’ve got big balls!”) en route to earning her commercial driver’s license — “It was probably the most daunting, and challenging, and fulfilling thing I’ve ever done — truly. I know people do it every single day, but you’re talking to a gal who doesn’t know how to drive a stick shift of a five-speed car, so it was incredible and it informed me so much as to who the character was.”

Photo: Michelle Monaghan in “Trucker.” Credit: Monterey Media.