Academy Award nominees attend Beverly Hills lunch three weeks before ceremony

Contenders in the running for an Academy Award have attended a pre-ceremony lunch in Beverly Hills – and they’re happy as ever to be in this year’s Oscar class photo.

This year Australia, unusually, isn’t represented in the acting category at all - but we still have two Aussies in the running.

David Lee, a sound mixer, and Tim Crosbie, a visual effects artist are nominated for X Men: Days of Future Past.

Mr Crosbie’s team from Rising Sun Pictures in Adelaide created a sequence for the latest X Men movie.

“My team is a group of extremely talented artists and we took about seven months to do this particular project," Mr Crosbie said.

“It’s only a minute and a half of footage."

Patricia Arquette is in with a fantastic chance at an Oscar.

She spent twelve years on and off shooting Richard Linklater’s Boyhood.

“Honestly, just walking in here I felt like it’s the grown up version of a kid going to Disneyland,” the star said.

Hollywood actress Julianne Moore played a woman dealing with the early onset of Alzheimer’s in Still Alice.

“The response I’ve received from the Alzheimer’s community has been tremendous, because they do feel what they’ve gone through has been represented,” Ms Moore said.

Robert Duvall has been nominated for an Oscar six times previously, but doesn't have his hopes up despite being nominated again this year.

“I’m not going to win it…it’s okay,” the veteran actor quipped.

The best actor gong is likely to be between Eddie Redmayne and Michael Keaton, for The Theory of Everything and Birdman respectively.

Redmayne explained the fun he had with his Golden Globe statue while, on his way home to London, trying taking it through security at LA airport.

"And I saw the woman stop the thing and saw her go in close on this weird shaped thing and she said I think it is an award or something, and I was praying they would make me open it and they did,” he said.

Keaton, meanwhile, is enjoying a resurrected career.

"You know after all that's the greatest thing. You just don't care what people think.”

The 2015 Academy Awards will be held in three weeks’ time.