It's a Long Way from Breaker High to the Academy Awards

It's official: Canuck Ryan Gosling has been nominated for an Academy Award! The broody method actor and one half of Canada's cutest Hollywood couple (Sorry Reynolds and Morissette, Gosling and McAdams have got you beat) got a best actor nod for his performance as a high-school teacher/junkie in Half Nelson. And to think it all started with a little piece of televised brilliance known as Breaker High - the story of a bunch of teens attending high school on a cruise around the world. Cheesetastic! Check out the Academy-worthy performance in the opening credits alone!

Of course, fellow nominee Leonardo DiCaprio (for The Blood Diamond instead of The Departed -shocking) has his own early-career cross to bear. He was the cutest homeless kid ever on the dying-gasp final season of Growing Pains. Who knows what those formative years working with master thespians like Alan Thicke and Kirk Cameron did to shape young Leo's acting chops. Thicke will totally come up in Leo's acceptance speech, no? Surely?

And I'm not sure anyone watching this video for the first time would have said "That guy is totally gonna be nominated for an Academy Award some day." Yet here's Will Smith, a second-time nominee. They call that Big Willy style.

That's just in the lead actor category. In best supporting actor, we have an erstwhile rapper and underwear model. Go Marky Mark! There's a former Bad News Bears player (along with Tatum O'Neal and Walter Matthau, Jackie Earle Haley could become the third Bear with an Academy Award on the mantle. Beat that, Mighty Ducks!) And of course, there's comedian and Spice-Girl-impregnator Eddie Murphy. Buckwheat himself. I mean, who didn't predict an Oscar for Eddie after seeing Pluto Nash?

There's a lot of cheese to go around, no? The actress lists seem to harbour a lot less shame, overall - unless you count dating Tom Cruise (bad Penelope, bad!) or finishing 7th on a TV talent contest as shameful. Which, of course, I totally do.