OSCAR HYPE AS A PART OF THE BUSINESS

“It’s really a bit stupefying--it’s like being on a team in the competition you haven’t signed up for,” said Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, reflecting on being an Oscar contender for the first time.

The 28-year-old Mastrantonio is nominated as best supporting actress for her performance opposite Paul Newman and Tom Cruise in Martin Scorsese’s “The Color of Money.”

“People will come up to me and say, ‘Do you think you’re going to win?’ and I’ll say, ‘You don’t understand, I already have won in a sense.’ It’s lovely to be recognized and acknowledged, and it shows you must be on the right track--especially if you were as fussy as I am about doing things the right way.”

Mastrantonio plans to attend the awards ceremony in Los Angeles Monday evening--”The ceremony is the fairy-tale fun part of the (film) business,” she said. But this week, while the ballots are being counted, she continued to appear on stage here at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater in David Hare’s operatic play “The Knife.” She plays a lonely flight attendant who befriends and then falls in love with a man (played by Mandy Patinkin) about to undergo a sex-change operation.

“I’m trying to see all the (Oscar) hype as part of the business too,” said the shy, soft-spoken actress, taking time out from “the important experience” of her current stage role to be interviewed in a favorite neighborhood coffee shop on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. “But it does seem a bit of overkill; after all, your work is up there on screen to speak for itself . . . especially, for someone like me, who was afraid of people seeing me in my Communion dress!”

Mastrantonio seemed softer, more light-hearted and easygoing in person than the hard-edged, sullen character she played in Scorsese’s film. The character is quiet and often on the periphery of the film’s action. But Mastrantonio stands out when engaged in a power struggle with Newman’s character (pool shark Fast Eddie Felson) over her boyfriend, played by Cruise.

In person, Mastrantonio, seems more like one of the many actors struggling to find success in New York rather than a film actress on the brink of stardom--or an Oscar.

The Oak Park, Ill. native has been struggling since coming to New York nearly five years ago. In addition to several Shakespearean roles at Papp’s Public Theater, she appeared in a series of Broadway musical flops before being cast by director Brian De Palma to play Al Pacino’s ill-fated sister in “Scarface.”

“I came here knowing nothing about acting or the business, and I’ve relied pretty much on my instinct,” said Mastrantonio, who was a voice major at the University of Illinois when she won a Chicago audition for a 1982 Broadway revival of “West Side Story.” Referring to acting classes as “too intimidating,” she said she has concentrated on watching good actors and listening to good directors, citing Newman and Scorsese as two of her best models.

“I didn’t read the script and say, ‘What a role!’ I wanted to work with the particular people involved when they got cooking,” she recalled, referring to Newman’s and Scorsese’s experience and to Cruise’s “great appetite and energy.”

She sounded enthusiastic about what she termed “the real work process” on the film, and said the more experienced members of the company were “open, nurturing, and encouraging, rather than intimidating. . . . Paul in particular asked many questions, such as, ‘What do you think?’ and it’s really not hard to win a supporting actress nomination when you work with Marty Scorsese.”

Mastrantonio was less enthusiastic about her film work since then: a TV movie, “Mussolini,” starring George C. Scott, and “Slam Dance,” a film by Wayne Wang, in which she stars with Tom Hulce and Harry Dean Stanton, due to be released later this year. Of the TV project, she said simply, “I didn’t think much of it.”

And of the coming film she said, “I really have no idea what it’s like. I can tell you that I have learned from Marty (Scorsese) and David Hare (the author also directed ‘The Knife’) how important a director can be.

“Naturally, you hope that everything will turn out just fine, and I think at least this (Oscar) nomination has upped the ante a bit this year,” said the actress, who hopes that her next role will be in another film.

Her greatest fear? “That a career will not really happen . . . that it will just fizzle out, and I won’t have the opportunity to do lots of different kinds of work. . . . “

Breaking away with her typical, self-effacing good humor, Mastrantonio reminded herself of the Hollywood mythology that has supporting actor Oscar nominees fading away: “I think all the nominees are on an island somewhere, and someday they’ll all make a movie. . . . But really, the fear is either that the career won’t happen--or that it will and I’ll find I’m not good enough. The challenge remains: I can do this , but can I do that ?”