The nominations for the Screen Actors Guild Award were announced today, and the religious-themed drama “Doubt” led all films with five nominatons, including lead actress for Meryl Streep (as an accusatory nun), three noms for supporting performances and one for best ensemble drama.

“Doubt,” co-starring nominee Philip Seymour Hoffman as a priest suspected of improper relatons with an altar boy, opens here on Dec. 25.

The other films nominated for best ensemble include most of the putative Oscar contenders for best picture: “Frost/Nixon” (also opening hereon Dec. 25), “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (ditto), “Milk” and “Slumdog Millionaire.”

Some of the notable individual nominees include Kate Winslet (for both “Revolutionary Road” and “The Reader”), Anne Hathway (”Rachel Getting Married”), Brad Pitt (”Benjamin Button”), Frank Langella (”Frost/Nixon”), Sean Penn (”Milk”), Heath Ledger (”The Dark Knight”) and comeback kid Mickey Rourke (”The Wrestler”). And it was heartening to see a nod for Richard Jenkins in “The Visitor.”

(More detail is available online.)

The SAG awards are a fairly reliable indicator of Academy Award voting trends. Actors are a plurality in the Academy, so if those people pick a performance for a SAG award, they are liable to do the same for the Oscars.

There is a threat of an actors strike hanging over Holywood this season, and the award shows may be shut down, as some of them were last year because of the writers strike. But the actors would surely not bust up their own party, so the ceremony ought to get more attenton than usual when it is broadcast on TNT and TBS on Jan. 25.