(From left to right) Charlize Theron, Susan Sarandon and Meryl Streep

With four days to go, here is Metro?s pick of the legendary leading ladies who have scored big on Oscar night over the years?

Katharine Hepburn: She talked straight and was years ahead of her time. She was also one of the most startling actresses the screen has ever known.

The uncompromising Katharine Hepburn, who had to, quite literally, fight and claw for her right to wear pants (not in a relationship, but on the sets), proved that you didn?t have to fit any bill to make it in show business. She received an amazing 12 nominations in the Best Actress category, and won four times for Morning Glory, Guess Who?s Coming to Dinner, The Lion in Winter (tied with Barbra Streisand for Funny Girl) and On Golden Pond.

Meryl Streep: Though she actually has one more nomination than Hepburn, a few of them are in the best supporting actress category. She has bagged two Oscars, one of which was for her supporting role in Kramer Vs Kramer and the other in a leading role in Sophie?s Choice. Her career is peppered with outstanding performances and she is considered by many to be the best actress of her generation, with films like The Bridges of Madison County, The French Lieutenant?s Woman and The Hours to her credit.

Vivien Leigh: She has to be on this list, and not just because she was born in Darjeeling. Her two Oscars as actress in a leading role were well deserved, even if the rest of her screen career lacked success. She brought Gone With The Wind?s Scarlet O?Hara to life, immortalising her as one of the most memorable characters on celluloid. Then, she repeated the feat with another vulnerable role full of contradictions as Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Elizabeth Taylor: She too did Tennessee Williams justice, as Maggie the Cat in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. But that wasn?t what won her the golden statuette (though that was one of her five nominations). Butterfield 8 was very watchable, though the movie wasn?t uniformly well received, and Taylor is thought to have won, beating Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment, more due to sympathy generated by a serious illness ? and one of the many divorces ? she had suffered at the time. Next was Who?s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, definitely Elizabeth Taylor at her best. And, of course, the ultimate glamour girl who started as a child star at just 10, had enthralled her viewers, as much off-screen as on, with her many marriages and violet eyes.

Susan Sarandon: She had come a long way since cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show in 1975. After nominations for Atlantic City, Thelma and Louise, Lorenzo?s Oil, Susan Sarandon finally took home the golden statuette for her role as a nun in 1995?s Dead Man Walking. She has held her ground as a gutsy actress, picking and choosing roles that she has liked, making no secret of the fact that it takes something truly interesting to woo her away from ?domestic paradise? with partner Tim Robbins and their two kids. She has also stepped into the role of producer with Stepmom, in which she starred with Julia Roberts.

Charlize Theron: With a face like hers, this former supermodel from South Africa could have easily been content being the next pretty thing to hit Hollywood. But that was not to be. Alongside soft roles in even softer films like Sweet November, Theron has slowly and steadily made her way through a decent number of better projects. But no one could have in their wildest dreams imagined the performance this beauty would put in for Monster. As she crawled into the skin of Aileen Wournos, a tortured serial killer, she took the viewer with her on the heart-breaking journey.

This year?s nomination list reads like this: Annette Bening for Being Julia, Catalina Sandino Moreno for Maria Full Of Grace, Imelda Staunton for Vera Drake, Hillary Swank for Million Dollar Baby and Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. Who will win the 77th Best Actress Oscar?