BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – The musical “Dreamgirls” led Academy Awards contenders Tuesday with eight nominations, but surprisingly was shut out for best picture, positioning the ensemble drama “Babel” or the mob saga “The Departed” as potential front-runners.

“Babel” was close behind with seven nominations, including best picture and acting honors for two newcomers to U.S. audiences, Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi. “The Departed” had five nominations, among them best picture, a directing slot for Martin Scorsese and a supporting-actor honor for Mark Wahlberg.

Other best-picture nominees were Clint Eastwood’s World War II spectacle “Letters From Iwo Jima,” the road-trip comedy “Little Miss Sunshine” and the monarchy-in-crisis chronicle “The Queen.”

Despite a scene-stealing performance, Wahlberg’s nomination was unanticipated considering he performed opposite such top-billed actors as Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson and Matt Damon. DiCaprio did earn a best-actor nomination for “Blood Diamond.”

“I wasn’t expecting it at all. I can’t believe it. I was sound asleep. My agent called and was screaming,” said Wahlberg, who plays a caustic, wisecracking cop. “I thought the house was on fire or something.”

Going into nominations day, the best-picture competition looked unusually wide open, with no consensus on a favorite. With Golden Globe musical winner “Dreamgirls” out of the running, the race could come down to Golden Globe drama winner “Babel” and “The Departed,” though “The Queen” could be a dark-horse contender, as well.

But front-runners in all four acting categories nabbed nominations and seem poised to come home with Oscars on Feb. 25: Helen Mirren for best actress as British monarch Elizabeth II in “The Queen”; Forest Whitaker for best actor as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in “The Last King of Scotland”; and Eddie Murphy and former “American Idol” finalist Jennifer Hudson as soulful singers in “Dreamgirls.”

Mirren said she had no idea “The Queen” would have such an impact.

“It is one of the hardest roles to play, not just a living person but one who is part of our everyday lives in Britain,” she said. “Whilst her presence is with us from her image on the letters that come through our door and on the money we spend, we know so little of the woman behind the image. I hope that my performance has conveyed a sense of Elizabeth the woman as well asthe queen.”

Oscar attention is a new experience for Murphy, whose fast-talking persona has brought him devoted audiences but little awards acclaim in his 25-year career. For Hudson, the nomination caps a speedy rise to stardom with her first film role, just two years after making her name on “American Idol.”

The best-actress category featured a 14th nomination for two-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep, padding her record as the most-nominated actor ever, this time as a demonically demanding boss in “The Devil Wears Prada.”

Joining Mirren and Streep as best-actress nominees were Penelope Cruz as a woman dealing with bizarre domestic crises in “Volver”; Judi Dench as a scheming teacher in “Notes on a Scandal”; and Kate Winslet as a bored housewife in an affair with a neighbor in “Little Children.”

Playing a mom who hangs out at the park with her child in “Little Children,” Winslet appropriately learned of her nomination while dropping her daughter off at school.

“I really am a soccer mom,” Winslet said, who earned her fifth Oscar nomination. “I am so happy. I am going to be screaming and whooping all day long. I really thought I wasn’t going to get a nomination. I am really going to try to enjoy this moment. I’m speechless. It feels like I’ve never been nominated before.”

Along with Whitaker and DiCaprio, best-actor nominees were Ryan Gosling as a teacher with a drug addiction in “Half Nelson”; Peter O’Toole as a lecherous old actor in “Venus”; and Will Smith as a homeless dad in “The Pursuit of Happyness.”

Whitaker is expected to come away with best actor, though sentiment is high for O’Toole, who has been nominated seven times, losing each. An eighth loss for O’Toole, who nearly turned down an honorary Oscar three years ago because he hoped to earn one outright, would put him in the record books as the actor with the most nominations without winning.

This finally may be the year for another perennial loser, Scorsese, who’s tied with four other directors for the Oscar-futility record of five nominations and five losses.

“The Departed” marks Scorsese’s return to the cops-and-mobsters genre he mastered in decades past and is considered his best shot to finally win an Oscar, though a sixth defeat would put him alone in the record book as the losingest director ever.

“He’s been deserving many times before,” Wahlberg said.

Prim Oscar voters maintained their track record of ignoring over-the-top comic performances, snubbing Sacha Baron Cohen for his Golden Globe-winning role in the raucous “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.” Cohen shared an adapted screenplay nomination for the largely improvised “Borat,” though.

The comedy front did bring supporting nominations for Alan Arkin as a foul-mouthed grandfather and Abigail Breslin as a girl obsessed with beauty pageants in “Little Miss Sunshine,” though the film’s three key performers, Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette and Steve Carell, were overlooked.

Ten-year-old Breslin became the fourth-youngest actress ever nominated, behind supporting-actress winner Tatum O’Neal (“Paper Moon”) and supporting-actress nominees Mary Badham (“To Kill a Mockingbird”) and Quinn Cummings (“The Goodbye Girl”). All three were 10 when nominated, a few months younger than Breslin.

With five blacks, two Hispanics and an Asian, it was the most ethnically diverse lineup ever among the 20 acting nominees. After decades in which the Oscars were a virtual whites-only club, with minority actors only occasionally breaking into the field, the awards have featured a much broader mix of nominees in the last few years.

Black actors in particular have come into their own, with Oscar wins by Halle Berry, Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx and Morgan Freeman, and three of the four acting front-runners this year.

Asians and Hispanics still lag behind, though nominations for Cruz, Barraza and Kikuchi are signs that Hollywood is making strides toward greater diversity.

While Cruz’s “Volver,” from Spanish director and past Oscar darling Pedro Almodovar, was shut out for foreign-language picture, another Hispanic film scored well. Mexican director Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” had six nominations, including foreign-language film, screenplay, cinematography and score.

“If each one of them got nominated on their own, that would be great, but the fact that they all did … that’s just too much for one little girl this early in the morning,” said Salma Hayek, an Oscar nominee for 2002’s “Frida,” who helped announced the nominees Tuesday morning.

Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu earned a best-director nomination for “Babel.”

Inarritu and Scorsese were joined in the best-director category by Eastwood for “Letters from Iwo Jima,” Stephen Frears for “The Queen,” and Paul Greengrass for the Sept. 11 docudrama “United 93.”

“Dreamgirls” looked as though it might follow 2002’s “Chicago” as a rare musical to win best-picture, but like last year’s music-themed “Walk the Line” it was a startling omission from the Oscar’s top category.

While Murphy and Hudson made it into the supporting categories, lead players Foxx and Beyonce Knowles and director Bill Condon were left out.

Three of the eight nominations for “Dreamgirls” came in a single category _ for original song.

Two-time best-picture and director winner Eastwood’s “Letters from Iwo Jima” had been considered a longshot and clearly was the film that denied “Dreamgirls” its chance at the top trophy.

Eastwood continued his late-career surge and Oscar magic with four nominations for the Japanese-language “Letters” including original screenplay. His World War II companion film “Flags of Our Fathers” also had two technical nominations, including sound editing in which it will compete against “Letters.”

The year’s top-grossing movie, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” grabbed four nominations in technical categories, including visual effects.