While some may spend their pre-Oscar week organizing their office pools and planning a dorked-out Oscar-themed menu for Sunday night’s festivities (Slumdog Masala, Doubt-ful Daquiris, something gross involving Milk), fags like us go trolling the internet for the finest in shirtless evidence of the nominated actors’ long, hard and distinguished careers.

Without further ado, we bring you The Sword’s now annual gallery of all the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor Nominees we see fit to feature shirtless.

(Scroll down for the results of our reader poll for who should win in the Actor category. Special thanks to Squarehippies.com for a few of the ‘caps.)

Best Actor

Sean Penn, Milk

He’s the favorite when it comes to the homo vote, but the Academy’s not just full of homos… and he won a couple years ago blah blah. Anyway, here’s a shot of him topless from the Castro Street Fair scene we know they shot for the film and pretty much left on the cutting room floor.

Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Brad, Brad, Brad. We’ve seen you naked. We’ve seen you shirtless six ways to Sunday. We still dream only of this shot of your 27-year-old abs from Thelma & Louise. No matter what else you do in life, Brad, and no matter how bad Angie fucks you up, this will be how we remember you. With love, The Sword

Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler

In a self-preservation arc reminiscent of many gay men, heterosexual train wreck Mickey Rourke used to look like this picture to your right. Now he looks like the photos you see below (click to enlarge). This role in The Wrestler, as it happens, was made for a man with a post-roidy body and face like a grizzled Kathleen Turner, so he’d better take the prize or it may never come around to him again.

Richard Jenkins, The Visitor

We’re quite happy to see this workhorse character actor finally getting his due, but this is about as naked as we want to see Richard Jenkins. Instead, we offer you a picture of James Franco in Milk–for his nude scenes alone he absolutely deserved a nod from the Academy. Just ask Marisa Tomei.

Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon

We hope you didn’t actually think we were going to go here. Here’s James again.

Best Supporting Actor

Josh Brolin, Milk

At least one hottie from Milk got a nod. Here’s a screencap of him from his Fall ’08 SNL appearance. Also, click on the thumbnail for a shot of him in Into the Blue.

Robert Downey Jr., Tropic Thunder

We did not see this film, but we heard it was real fun. Here’s a pic of newly muscle-y Robert, preparing for a scene in last summer’s Iron Man.

Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt

Much like last year, when he was nominated for Charlie Wilson’s War, we’re going to glance over this one and avoid scaring up any screencaps from Phil’s icky sex scene with Marisa Tomei in Before the Devil Knows Your Dead.

Instead, here’s another pic of James Franco swimming naked in a pool in Milk, for which he should have been nominated, if not for Pineapple Express!

Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight

Despite being deceased, he’s the odds-on favorite in this race. We’re not sure how we’d feel about that if we were, say Josh Brolin. But we are not, and neither he nor James Franco will ever love us, so here’s a pic of Heath in his glory days. And another one that made the rounds a couple years back — if you click the NSFW thumb below — of him naked in an outtake from the set of Brokeback Mountain.

Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road

He’s the least known of this band of acting brothers, and therefore the least photographed or screencapped. We leave you with this pic of James Franco, spraying deodorant on his armpit from 2000’s Whatever It Takes.