Steven Spielberg's Civil War epic Lincoln leads the Golden Globe nominations with seven nods.

The movie, based on the life of US president Abraham Lincoln, is up for best drama, best director for Spielberg and acting honours for Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones.

Tied for second-place with five nominations each, including best drama, are Ben Affleck's Iran hostage-crisis thriller Argo and the slave-turned-bounty-hunter tale Django Unchained.

Other best-drama nominees are Ang Lee's shipwreck story Life Of Pi and the Osama bin Laden manhunt thriller Zero Dark Thirty.

Nominated for best musical or comedy are the British retiree adventure The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, the Tom Hooper musical Les Miserables, first-love tale Moonrise Kingdom, fishing romance Salmon Fishing In The Yemen and the lost-soul romance Silver Linings Playbook.

Along with Daniel as Abraham Lincoln, best dramatic actor contenders are Richard Gere as a deceitful Wall Streeter in Arbitrage, John Hawkes as a polio victim trying to lose his virginity in The Sessions, Joaquin Phoenix as a Navy veteran under the sway of a cult leader in The Master and Denzel Washington as a boozy airline pilot in Flight.

Trainspotting star Ewan McGregor is nominated for the best actor in a musical or comedy film for his role in Salmon Fishing In The Yemen. Co-star Emily Blunt receives a nod in the female category along with fellow Brit Dame Judi Dench for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Maggie Smith as an ageing singer in a retirement home in Quartet.

Dramatic-actress nominees are Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty, Marion Cotillard in Rust And Bone, Dame Helen Mirren as Alfred Hitchcock's strong-minded wife in Hitchcock, Naomi Watts as a woman caught up in a devastating tsunami in The Impossible, and Rachel Weisz as a woman ruined by an affair in The Deep Blue Sea.

There was also recognition for Adele after her Bond theme, Skyfall, was nominated for best original song in a motion picture.