An actor you're surprised has more than one nomination?

Goldie Hawn is the first to come to my mind. She always has a nice presence in films, but she's never been Oscar level and her second nomination is pretty strange.

Hilary Swank. Heck, I'm surprised she has two Oscars, considering her career.

To sort of piggy back on your answer, Djimon Hounsou. Not that he's not great, but his filmography is so all over the damn place.

  I still cant believe he has any.

Emily Watson - for reasons similar to Samantha Morton.

Hathaway. 2 too many for her level of talent. Her work looks even more ridiculous now after 5-10 years.

I'll add JLaw . 4 noms and she's not even 30 years old yet.

Her only Weinstein-backed nod was Silver Linings Playbook.

Technically he has four, he produced American Sniper as well.

His Moneyball was well deserved but there is absolutely nothing special about his performance in The Wolf of Wall Street.

I think it was the fact that Rachel Getting Married is critics' bait.  "oooh look at me, I can do a Dogme, I can do a Von Trier" and that gave critics the impression that it's the critics choice of the year.  Most of all the other acclaimed films of the year (The Dark Knight, Wall-E, In Bruges, Slumdog Millionaire) aren't what I'd consider critics bait on first impression.  Maybe The Wrestler counts, but I still think Rachel Getting Married is what the critics really sold to us that year.  Where they simply responded well to The Wrestler, I think they really tried to sell us Rachel Getting Married.  It's a small, independent film with relationship-drama aspects with dysfunctional characters.   There was.....Winslet in Revolutionary Road and The Reader, Streep in Doubt, and Jolie in Changeling.  The other choices weren't strong, but critics are obviously gonna have another set of lens viewing those films as opposed to Rachel Getting Married.

I also think in 2008, they were desperate to make Hathaway the new star.  You can kinda tell they were heading that way in '05 and '06: Brokeback Mountain, The Devil Wears Prada..... big hits with her in the middle.   A similar, though not exactly the kind of situation Winslet had in '97 with Titanic.  She naturally evolved into a great actress though, even though they were really trying to make her a star after Titanic.  Hathaway was the latter but she evolved into the limited, minimal talent we should've all expected.

It always surprises me that Woody Harrelson has managed to rack up 3 nominations, and not because I don't think he's a good actor, because I think he's a very good actor. I just get such an unhollywood vibe from him, he's like the antithesis of someone like Bradley Cooper, who also has three.