Martin Scorsese may finally be in position for Academy Awards glory, but his Howard Hughes epic The Aviator will have to duke it out with Clint Eastwood’s boxing drama Million Dollar Baby. The best picture and director honors are shaping up as a two-film race between Scorsese’s and Eastwood’s flicks, with The Aviator as front-runner, leading the pack with 11 nominations Tuesday.

Best director

Martin Scorsese, the filmmaker behind such modern classics as Raging Bull, Taxi Driver and GoodFellas, has never won a directing Oscar despite four previous nominations.

“We don’t want to jinx anything, but ultimately there is no one more deserving, absolutely,”said Leonardo DiCaprio, a best actor nominee as Howard Hughes in The Aviator and the star of Scorsese’s 2002 film Gangs of New York, which had 10 Oscar nominations but lost in every category.

Along with his directing slot, Clint Eastwood was nominated for best actor as a bad-tempered boxing trainer in Million Dollar Baby. Eastwood previously had acting and directing nominations with 1992’s Unforgiven, which won the best picture and directing Oscars.

His acting nomination this time was a slight surprise given that most previous Hollywood honors had singled out Eastwood for his direction on Million Dollar Baby, not his performance.

Besides Eastwood and Scorsese, directing nominees were Taylor Hackford for Ray, Mike Leigh for Vera Drake and Alexander Payne for Sideways.

Best actor

Jamie Foxx landed dual nominations. Foxx is considered the favorite in the best actor race for his dazzling emulation of musician Ray Charles in Ray, and he also was picked in the supporting category for Collateral, in which he plays a cabdriver forced to drive a hitman on a killing spree. No actor has won both accolades in the same year.

Joining DiCaprio, Eastwood and Foxx in the best actor race were Johnny Depp as playwright Barrie in Finding Neverland and Don Cheadle in Hotel Rwanda, starring as hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina, who sheltered refugees from the Rwandan genocide.

Best actress

The best actress category presents a rematch of the 1999 showdown, when underdog Hilary Swank won the Oscar for Boys Don’t Cry over Annette Bening, who had been the front-runner for American Beauty.

Along with Swank in Million Dollar Baby, Bening was nominated for Being Julia, in which she plays an aging 1930s stage diva exacting wickedly comic revenge on the men in her life and a young rival. Both actresses won Golden Globes, Swank for best dramatic actress, Bening for actress in a musical or comedy.

Also nominated for the best actress Oscar: Catalina Sandino Moreno as a woman imperiled when she signs on to smuggle heroin in Maria Full of Grace; Imelda Staunton as a saintly housekeeper in 1950s Britain who performs illegal abortions on the side in Vera Drake; and Kate Winslet as a woman who has had memories of her ex-boyfriend erased in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Supporting actor

Along with Foxx in Collateral, supporting actor nominees were Alan Alda as a senator tussling with Hughes in The Aviator; Morgan Freeman as a worldly-wise ex-boxer in Million Dollar Baby; Thomas Haden Church as a bridegroom out for a final fling in Sideways; and Clive Owen as a coarse lover in the sex drama Closer.

An old hand at the Oscar race with three previous nominations, Freeman said he would rather have slept another hour than be awakened by his publicist with word that he was in the running.

Supporting actress

Academy voters picked Cate Blanchett, who plays Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator; Laura Linney as sex researcher Alfred Kinsey’s carnally adventurous wife in Kinsey; Virginia Madsen as a deceived lover in Sideways; Sophie Okonedo as innkeeper Rusesabagina’s wife in Hotel Rwanda; and Natalie Portman as a gutsy stripper in Closer.

Best foreign language film

The nominees for best foreign language film were Sweden’s As It Is in Heaven, France’s The Chorus, Germany’s Downfall, Spain’s The Sea Inside and South Africa’s Yesterday.

Chinese director Zhang Yimou’s highly praised House of Flying Daggers did not make the foreign film list but was nominated for best cinematography.

The Academy Awards will be presented Feb. 27 in Los Angeles.