In Oscar’s spotlight -- but who is she?

Catalina Sandino Moreno still waits in lines. Kate Winslet apparently does not.

A Hollywood newcomer’s arrival presents a strange education, with unexpected teaching moments popping up along the way. For Moreno, the 23-year-old Colombian star of “Maria Full of Grace,” the recent luncheon for Academy Award nominees offered new insight into show business queue protocol.

Moreno, who is nominated for best actress in the 77th annual Oscars, patiently waited her turn at the luncheon to pose for photographers, swaying occasionally in her high heels.

In front of her stood the filmmakers behind best picture contender “Sideways” and Counting Crows singer Adam Duritz, up for best original song from “Shrek 2.” No one was going anywhere. And then Winslet, nominated as best actress for “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” cut past everyone, as if she were in some invisible carpool lane.

Moreno and her publicist exchanged glances, yet reserved judgment, resuming a conversation about “Finding Neverland” best actor nominee Johnny Depp. “We all love Kate Winslet,” Moreno diplomatically said later.

If different rules apply to actors of different ranks, the Oscars can also simultaneously level the playing field, if only for a few post-nomination weeks.

Yes, Winslet starred in a global blockbuster called “Titanic.” Yes, “Million Dollar Baby’s” Hilary Swank already has won a best actress trophy. Yes, “Being Julia’s” Annette Bening is married to Warren Beatty. But like “Vera Drake’s” equally unfamiliar nominee, Imelda Staunton, the neophyte Moreno is a best actress nominee too, and there she stands on identical footing.

“These people are all very good actresses, but I am here for a reason,” Moreno says after the luncheon, having shed her sleek, green luncheon dress and pumps for a white sweater and jeans. “Sometimes I have this confusion in my head and I freak out: ‘I’m the new girl, they don’t care about me, I’m not at their level.’

“Of course, I can’t be at the level of someone like Cate Blanchett,” Moreno says, referring to the best supporting actress nominee from “The Aviator,” whose work Moreno admires. “But I am nominated. I think it’s fantastic that I have the fifth spot, that I can be a part of that group. So when I get confused, I just shut down my brain.”

It’s probably a good idea, given how fast Moreno’s world has been turning.

Two years back, she was a Bogota advertising student, her dreams of moving to New York and becoming an actor growing increasingly distant. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, her family prohibited her from moving, regardless of the cost.

Still, she kept acting, but with diminished hopes, as she was starting to lose interest in theater. Encouraged by her mother, she nevertheless tried out for the title role in American writer-director Joshua Marston’s debut feature. With “Maria Full of Grace’s” filming just weeks away, Marston hadn’t yet found somebody who could credibly play a 17-year-old girl who becomes a drug mule.

It’s a complex role, as Maria Alvarez is neither an innocent nor a delinquent. She instead lives in that shadowy region between the two extremes, where someone trapped by circumstances, including poverty and pregnancy, makes a series of bad decisions, even while her heart remains in the right place. Maria wants to escape her Colombian life, but the only way she’s going to be able to get to the United States is by smuggling drugs.

Marston already had considered about 800 actresses to play the role, while others had encouraged him to cast a star like Penelope Cruz or Jennifer Lopez. But he needed authenticity, not a name. With time running out in his quest for the perfect Maria, Marston popped Moreno’s videotaped audition into his VCR.

“She was not parroting another kind of performance,” Marston says of what immediately struck him in Moreno’s audition. The actresses he had rejected tended to be self-conscious, imitating the histrionics of Spanish- language soap operas.

“You could feel them doing a scene the way they might have remotely remembered seeing someone doing it on a soap opera. But Catalina was very natural. It’s a characteristic that is really rare.”

The filmmaker even used Moreno’s wide-eyed wonder to shape Maria’s portrayal. When the film’s character finally arrives in New York and takes in Times Square, it is Moreno herself who is also captivated by seeing the metropolis for the first time.

“All that sense of newness was something that I was looking for,” Marston says.

While Moreno didn’t face the physical challenges encountered by Swank, who trained for months to play a boxer, she did have to swallow eight thumb-sized balloons, which is how her character smuggles heroin pellets into the United States. Moreno also performed some minor stunts, including climbing a wall -- and injured her knee in the process.

As far as what she was and was not supposed to do, Marston says, “She had no expectations.”

The same can be said for the film, a $3.5-million Spanish-language drama that was financed by HBO Films. “Maria Full of Grace” originally was going to premiere on the pay-television network, but the film’s debut at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival was so strong (winning the audience award) that Fine Line Features agreed to release the film theatrically.

As the film hit more festivals around the globe and U.S. theaters last July, Moreno continued attracting spectacular notices. She won awards from the Berlin International Film Festival, the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. and the Seattle International Film Festival, among others.

Because it was funded by a U.S. company and made with a mostly American crew, “Maria Full of Grace” was not eligible to be submitted by Colombia for the foreign language film Oscar. But there is no such rule keeping a first-time movie performer out of contention for a best actress award, even if she speaks Spanish throughout the film. Her Oscar nomination, while certainly a mild surprise, was hardly a shocker.

“I know it’s great exposure for this ‘new girl,’ but I don’t know how it’s affecting me,” Moreno says of the nomination in near-perfect English, a result of having attended an English-taught school in Colombia. “I know it’s happening to me, but the only other thing I know is this will help me get more roles like Maria.”

After the nominations were announced on Jan. 25, in fact, Moreno says the quality of the scripts sent to her improved, although she has yet to decide which movie to do next.

“I need the money,” she says. “I haven’t worked in a long time.”

As for the Oscar ceremony, Moreno doesn’t know what to expect; she didn’t watch the show growing up, preferring instead the Miss Universe beauty pageant, where at least she could root for a fellow Colombian.

“I never cared,” Moreno says of the Academy Awards show. “It was so far away from me and it wasn’t near my future.”

In a way, Moreno’s rise mirrors Maria’s. Both were moving through life in Colombia, dreaming of a different future, one filled with new challenges and opportunities. Moreno, for one, now lives in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Maria, of course, made a very bad decision, although luck certainly guards her. And by the end of the story, Maria, like Moreno, is no longer a girl but has entered adulthood.

Everything Moreno does seems equally blessed, even if her chances of winning an Oscar statuette appear slim: Only one woman, “Two Women’s” Sophia Loren, has ever won the best actress Oscar for a foreign-language role.

“Who in the world would have dreamed this would happen?” Marston says. “This just totally blows her and me away.”