Oscar nominations 2013: Jessica Chastain, Jennifer Lawrence and Naomi Watts battle for best actress Academy Award

Emma Stone and Seth MacFarlane announced the Academy Award nominations for 2013 in Los Angeles on Thursday - and it's shaping up to be a fierce battle for the best actress nod. 
The nominations include - Jessica Chastain as a CIA operative in Zero Dark Thirty; Jennifer Lawrence as a troubled young widow struggling to heal in Silver Linings Playbook; Emmanuelle Riva as an ailing woman tended by her husband in Amour; Quvenzhane Wallis as a spirited girl on the Louisiana delta in Beasts of the Southern Wild; and Naomi Watts as a mother caught up in a devastating tsunami in The Impossible.

And the nominees are: Jennifer Lawrence and Naomi Watts are up for best actress

Along with Sally Field for Lincoln, supporting actress nominees are Amy Adams as a cult leader's devoted wife in The Master; Anne Hathaway as an outcast mother reduced to prostitution in Les Miserables; Helen Hunt as a sex surrogate in The Sessions; and Jacki Weaver as an unstable man's doting mom in Silver Linings Playbook.
The Civil War saga Lincoln leads the Academy Awards with 12 nominations, including best picture, director for Steven Spielberg and acting honors for Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones.

Battle: Jessica Chastain and French actress Emmanuelle Riva will also battle it out for the best actress

Early rise to fame: At the age of nine, Quvenzhane Wallis is the youngest ever best actress nominee in history

Also among the 9 nominees for best picture is the old-age love story Amour; the Iran hostage thriller Argo; the independent hit Beasts of the Southern Wild; the slave-revenge narrative Django Unchained; the musical Les Miserables; the shipwreck story Life of Pi; the lost-souls romance Silver Linings Playbook; and the Osama bin Laden manhunt chronicle Zero Dark Thirty.

Chronicling Abraham Lincoln's final months as he engineers passage of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, Lincoln stars best-actor contender Day-Lewis in a monumental performance as the 16th president, supporting-actress nominee Field as the notoriously headstrong Mary Todd Lincoln and supporting-actor prospect Jones as abolitionist firebrand Thaddeus Stevens.

Drama: Lawrence plays Tiffany, a messed-up twenty-something who's had an unfulfilling childhood, in Silver Linings Playbook alongside co-star Bradley Cooper

Recalling a tragedy: Watts plays real-life tsunami survivor Maria Belon in The Impossible

Thriller: Chastain plays a member of the elite team of spies and military operatives, stationed in a covert base overseas in Zero Dark Thirty

Joining Day-Lewis in the best actor field are Bradley Cooper as a psychiatric patient trying to get his life back together in Silver Linings Playbook; Hugh Jackman as Victor Hugo's tragic hero Jean Valjean in Les Miserables; Joaquin Phoenix as a Navy vet who falls in with a cult in The Master; and Denzel Washington as a boozy airline pilot in Flight.
Besides Jones, the supporting actor contenders are Alan Arkin as a wily Hollywood producer in Argo; Robert De Niro as a football-obsessed patriarch in Silver Linings Playbook; Philip Seymour Hoffman as a dynamic cult leader in The Master; and Christoph Waltz as a genteel bounty hunter in Django Unchained.
The Oscars feature a best-picture field that ranges from five to 10 films depending on a complex formula of ballots from the 5,856 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Incredible performance: Emmanuelle Riva, 85, has garnered rave reviews for her performance in Amour

Breakout role: Wallis plays Hushpuppy, a fiercely independent little girl who lives in the Louisiana bayou with her father Wink in Beast of the Southern Wild

Winners for the 85th Oscars will be announced February 24 at a ceremony aired live on ABC from Hollywood's Dolby Theatre.
Family Guy creator and vocal star Seth MacFarlane, a versatile performer whose work includes directing and voicing for the title character of last summer's hit Ted and a Frank Sinatra-style album of standards, is the Oscar host.
Thursday's nominees were announced at 8:40 a.m. EST by The Amazing Spider-Man star Emma Stone and MacFarlane, the first time that an Oscar show host has joined in the preliminary announcement since 1972, when Charlton Heston participated on nominations day.

Early wake up call: Emma Stone and Seth MacFarlane announced the nominees of the 85th Academy Awards at the AMPAS Samuel Goldwyn Theater this morning