Day-Lewis is up for the best actor award at the Oscars

Daniel Day-Lewis, Michael Caine, Stephen Daldry and Catherine Zeta Jones are leading Britain's assault on the 2003 Academy Awards.

Day-Lewis and Caine are competing against each other in the category of best actor in a leading role, for Gangs of New York and The Quiet American.

Director Stephen Daldry is up for an Oscar for The Hours, which stars Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore.

Zeta Jones received her first Oscar nomination - for best supporting actress - for her portrayal of Velma Kelly in Chicago, while her co-star Renee Zellweger is up for best actress.

Zeta Jones played Velma Kelly in Chicago

Caine and Day-Lewis are Oscars veterans - Caine has been up for six Academy Awards and won two, for Hannah and Her Sisters in 1987 and The Cider House Rules in 2000.

Day-Lewis has been up for three Oscars, winning one for My Left Foot in 1989, for his portrayal of Christy Brown, who was born with cerebral palsy.

Stiff competition

Caine plays a reporter who becomes embroiled in the war in Vietnam in The Quiet American, while Day-Lewis plays the bloodthirsty Bill the Butcher in the Martin Scorsese's epic, Gangs of New York.

The actors will also be up against Jack Nicholson, Nicholas Cage and Adrien Brody.

Theatre and film director Daldry scored critical and commercial success with his first movie - Billy Elliot, but looks to have surpassed that with The Hours, which picked up a total of nine Oscar nominations.

The film tells three tales all bound by Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway.

Daldry is nominated for achievement in directing

Daldry is up against Martin Scorsese in his category, whom he lost out to at the Golden Globes, as well as Rob Marshall (Chicago), Pedro Almodovar (Talk To Her) and Roman Polanski (The Pianist).

Zeta Jones also faces stiff competition, joining Kathy Bates, Julianne Moore, Queen Latifah and Meryl Streep for this year's nominations.

Nominees in 10 of the 24 categories were announced by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Frank Pierson and actress Marisa Tomei, an Oscar-winner for My Cousin Vinny in 1993.

The awards ceremony will take place at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre on Sunday 23 March.