Julianne Moore is ecstatic that the Academy has chosen to honour her with a best actress Oscar nomination for her role in The End of The Affair.

Moore is nominated in a category that includes Annette Bening, Meryl Streep, Hilary Swank and the British actress Janet McTeer.

The 38-year-old is no stranger to the Oscars, she was nominated for her role as porn star Amber Waves in Paul Thomas Anderson's 1997 film Boogie Nights.

Recently, Moore was cast in one of the most coveted roles in Hollywood, playing FBI agent Clarice Starling in Hannibal, after Jodie Foster dropped out of the much anticipated sequel to The Silence of The Lambs.

But Moore has a real fondness for the part that brought her the Oscar nomination, playing the pious and principled Sarah Miles - the wife of a dull civil servant who has an adulterous relationship in Neil Jordan's adaptation of Graham Greene's The End of The Affair.

"There's a staggering nobility to her that you don't often see in characters," says Moore of Sarah Miles, who she viewed as someone with a "very strong sense of morality" in a story that is essentially "her journey towards understanding of what love really is".

Steven Spielberg, Robert Altman, Paul Thomas Anderson, Gus Van Sant and The Coen Brothers are just a few of the top film-makers who have worked with Moore, but the actress reserves a special fondness for Jordan who directed her in The End of The Affair.

Perfection

"I always, always wanted to work with Neil," says Moore who found him a perfect director. "His sensibility is so romantic and so poetic, he has the ability to convey emotion completely without sentimentality, it's absolutely beautiful the way he does it, it's just so real and not all treacly you know."

Moore, who appeared naked from the waist down in Robert Altman's 1993 film Short Cuts, is no newcomer to on-screen nudity and sex. She credits Jordan for creating the right atmosphere on set during intimate love scenes.

She agrees with the director that The End of The Affair is "one of the most erotic books ever written".

"It's a romantic love story, and so it's our responsibility to show how these people loved one another and fortunately I had a great partner with Ralph, someone one I really, really relied on a great deal and I really trusted Neil."

Oscar underdog

Moore is up against extremely tough competition on Oscars night, and although a strong candidate she is not the favourite to win.

When asked by reporters who she thinks will walk away with the best actress Oscar she avows: "I think probably Hilary (Swank) or Annette (Bening), that's what it looks like."

"You forget that when you were nine years old, and when you were 14, when you were 18, that every year you sat in front of the TV set and thought, 'oh I hope so and so wins'!"

Moore is an incredibly gifted actress. She has a breadth to her performances which is truly astounding, but she hasn't yet broken through into a full movie star phenomenon, which is perhaps a compliment because her focus has quite clearly been on acting rather than seeking stardom.

But with her high profile Oscar nomination and her recent casting in Hannibal as FBI agent Clarice Starling her position in the big league now seems all but assured.