All five nominees for best actor at this year's Academy Awards play heroes who must look within to free themselves from some sort of prison.

Heroism has always been a big part of our best stories -- from the Book of Genesis to Homer's Odyssey to Luke Skywalker -- but recently Hollywood films have included lots of conversations about a national craving for heroes.

The heroes portrayed by the Oscar nominees for best actor are unlikely to satisfy that craving.

In "Quills," Geoffrey Rush plays the Marquis de Sade, imprisoned in an insane asylum for writing sexually explicit literature. When all his liberties are revoked, and his tongue is chopped off, he still finds emancipation in his writing -- turning his excrement into ink, and using the walls of his cell as the blank page.

Javier Bardem plays Reinaldo Arenas in "Before Night Falls," a writer in Castro's Cuba who first supported the revolution but is later persecuted for his homosexuality, and eventually imprisoned for his gay writings that have been smuggled out of the country and published in Spain. Like the Marquis, he can find liberation only by throwing hypnotically lush language at tyranny.

In "Gladiator," Russell Crowe plays Maximus, an honorable Roman general betrayed by Caesar, who is sold into slavery. He becomes a pitiless gladiator. As a slave, being transferred from one cage to another, he holds on to his dignity in the face of extraordinary adversity, even when given the chance to act as immorally as his enemies.

Tom Hanks in "Cast Away" plays a man who lives alone for two years on a tiny island -- confronting the same conditions that face imprisoned men locked for 24 hours a day in solitary confinement. Finally, he finds he must look deeply within himself to find the resources he needs to cope with the immense solitude.

A different but no less confining prison holds Ed Harris playing an abstract painter in the film "Pollock." Locked into his body, tormented by chronic depression and alcoholism. To survive, to be free, he surrenders to his imagination and creates a style of painting that revolutionized the form and style of 20th century art.

At a time when the Taliban are blowing up Buddhist statues, Hollywood is making films where our heroes are surviving by learning Buddhist lessons. Confined men can transcend their predicament by changing their reaction to it. Solitude can only harass you if you think you are alone in the world. Turn solitude into an active engagement with the self and voila! solitary confinement becomes a vital life.

Years ago our heroes were John Wayne as a fighting Sea Bee, or Audie Murphy as WWII heroes. But these actors play heroes who must survive prison tier-like conditions, not a romantic battlefield.

Thirteen years ago, I became obsessed like the rest of the nation with TV programs like COPS and America's Most Wanted. (I was robbing banks at the time so I watched with my bags packed, just in case my face flashed across the screen.)

I believe the images of arrests and jailings on those "reality shows" inundated us and altered our view of the landscape of survival. Think about it: The most popular shows on television are crime dramas like The Sopranos, or shows about incarceration, like Survivor, Big Brother, and OZ. And we like them because they seem so "real," not merely reality-based.