'Lincoln' leads the Academy Awards with 12 nominations

The Civil War saga was nominated for Best Picture; Director for Steven Spielberg and acting honors for Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones.

Also among the nine nominees for Best Picture announced on Thursday - 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."

Daniel Day-Lewis was nominated for Best Actor for his role chronicling Abraham Lincoln's final months as he engineers passage of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery.

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."

Nominated for Best Actress are Jessica Chastain as a CIA operative hunting bin Laden 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."

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.

Winners for the 85th Oscars will be announced on 24 February 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.

The nominees were announced by "The Amazing Spider-Man" star Emma Stone and MacFarlane.

It's the first time that an Oscar show host has joined in the preliminary announcement since 1972, when Charlton Heston participated on nominations day.