Calendar’s Big Oscars Issue : Rue, Britannia : The British <i> like </i> it when their Oscar nominees win. Really they do. It’s just that first, a bit of struggle is required--and modesty’s mandatory

Everyone loves a winner, right?

If you believe that, it only goes to show you’ve never spent any time in Britain.

At no time of year is it clearer that the British despise their winners than the weeks leading up to Oscar night.

Around this time, Americans who take an interest in such things are animatedly speculating whether Tom Hanks, Tommy Lee Jones, Winona Ryder or whomever they like will receive a statuette come Oscar night. Should their favored nominees win (and make the right kind of modest noises in their acceptance speeches), then Americans, good-hearted, generous-spirited people that they are, will be genuinely pleased for them.

We British approach all this rather differently. We are a nation suffering from the “tall poppy” syndrome--which means we take cruel delight in cutting down those individuals who distinguish themselves above others. We just about tolerate people who restrict their success to Britain. For those who have the temerity to achieve fame and respect abroad we reserve our deepest loathing. Especially if they do so in America. More especially still if they do so in Hollywood.

This is why, since Oscar nominations were announced, the British media have been sharpening their knives. Prime targets this year are Daniel Day-Lewis and Emma Thompson.

Day-Lewis has already stuck his head above the parapet, having won a surprise Oscar for 1989’s “My Left Foot.” This time the media are ready for him; since this year’s nomination he has been the subject of newspaper profiles that, in the absence of any sexual scandal or substance abuse problems surrounding him, simply seek to portray him as an obsessive teetering on the very edge of sanity.

His breakdown during a 1989 stage performance of “Hamlet” was exhumed and analyzed for clues to his alleged instability. His preparations for his Oscar-nominated role in “In the Name of the Father” were lovingly detailed--how he had himself locked into a prison cell on the film set for three days, how he hired men to kick at his cell door, shout abuse at him and douse him with buckets of water to interrupt his sleep. This, said one headline, was “madly obsessive” behavior. An anonymous source said: “A lot of actors pretend to be crazy. But with Daniel you can never be sure it’s just an act.”

Given the parlous state of their film industry, one might think the British would be wildly cheering an actor like Day-Lewis, whose success at the very least brings enormous credit to their acting tradition. Instead, the Brits, with a wink and a smirk, prefer to insinuate he’s gaga.

Thompson comes off even worse. She is someone who, in academy terms, has achieved something even more extraordinary: The year after winning an Oscar for “Howards End,” she is now nominated for two further performances--in “The Remains of the Day” and “In the Name of the Father.” Yet she and her husband, Kenneth Branagh, are chronic irritants to the British media because they have achieved success at an early age, and because they show every sign of relishing it.

Branagh committed the unforgivably immodest sin (in British eyes) of writing an autobiography before his 30th birthday; when it became clear that Hollywood regarded him as a major talent, his fate in his homeland was sealed. (If Branagh ever wins an Oscar, a good half-dozen journalists in Britain may contemplate suicide.)

Thompson now recalls that the British press initially approved of her, but implied after she married Branagh that she only got work through him. “I thought, ‘Boy, is that ever mean-spirited,’ ” she said. “And sexist.”

Now Thompson does not talk to Britain’s tabloids. But it was a broadsheet film critic, the Sunday Times’ Julie Burchill, who recently launched the most damning attack on her.

Reviewing “In the Name of the Father,” Burchill wrote of Thompson: “Fast becoming the most mannered, irritating actress since Meryl Streep, her performance is a national scandal. She seems like an amateur actress auditioning way out of her depth. Even seen from behind, not speaking, completely covered, with a raincoat over her head, running, she has the power to irritate and dismay in a way that very few actors do.” This was a review (in a supposedly respectable paper) of work that won Thompson a best supporting actress nomination.

The problem with Day-Lewis and Thompson, I suspect, is that neither has yet experienced failure or hardship; their rise to their current preeminence appears effortless. The British need them to suffer a personal crisis, financial problems or a career downturn before being recast as lovable.

Both actors might find this too high a price to pay; yet it is precisely why Anthony Hopkins is respected, even revered, by the same people who long to see Thompson and Day-Lewis stumble. Hopkins had the sense to launch a preemptive strike against fate long before his current run of acclaim; he already had under his belt a broken marriage, a long bout with alcoholism and a movie career one might charitably describe as undistinguished. Now he affects modest bemusement at his success--a very British trick. No wonder they love him.

In fact, Britain has a long tradition of denigrating its actors and directors who flourish in Hollywood. (If they also decide to live in America, the base for most film work, the press accuses them of “turning their backs on Britain.”) Fifty years ago, some of Laurence Olivier’s acting colleagues thought it irredeemably vulgar of him to pursue a Hollywood career in tandem with his “serious” British stage work.

More recently Michael Caine and Dudley Moore were castigated for going Hollywood. In the mid-’80s, Caine was acclaimed in America as an accomplished actor who enhanced every film in which he appeared; the British media portrayed him as a marginally talented Cockney riding a lucky break. For a couple of years Moore, in “10” and “Arthur,” was one of Hollywood’s leading up-and-coming actors; the British wondered why the Oxford graduate was wasting his talent and, worse, living in L.A., frying his brain cells. Here were the two actors making money and enjoying themselves. The Brits hated that.

Oscar winner Jeremy Irons (1990’s “Reversal of Fortune”) gets flak in the British press for being aloof and superior. After meeting him, profile writer Lynn Barber wrote: “I just wanted to boil him in oil.”

Who’s next in line for this treatment? Step forward Ralph Fiennes, best supporting actor nominee this year for “Schindler’s List.” He seems a good bet for no other reason than the fact he has come a long way quickly; once the Fleet Street rat pack get wind of how much Fiennes can command for a film, the knives will surely be out for him too.

Despite our penchant for devouring our actors, we paradoxically love it when, like this year, they are well represented in the Oscar nominations. We note proudly that in the last five years, nine of 25 best actor nominees have been British. We strut around and tell ourselves, yes, we may have a tiny, underfinanced film industry, but by God, we can storm Hollywood and teach those wealthy, big-mouthed glamorous Yanks a thing or two about movies.

In fact we’re so keen to see a hefty British contingent on Oscar night that we temporarily co-opt Irish actors and directors to add to the total. Given the way the British have treated the Irish over the centuries, they might reasonably take a dim view of this, but the British media ignore such considerations: Day-Lewis thinks of himself as Irish, but he was born in London, so he’s British, right? Liam Neeson’s from Northern Ireland, so that makes him British. Jim Sheridan? Irish through and through, but--well, let’s not complicate things, OK?

Brenda Fricker, who won an Oscar for best supporting actress in Sheridan’s “My Left Foot,” once summed up this tendency of the British press memorably: “Win an Oscar and you’re a British actress. When they find you face down and drunk in a gutter, you’re Irish.”

It’s a strange phenomenon, then, this British craving for Oscar success combined with hostility to the individuals who achieve it. Presumably if it could somehow become a team sport we would be happier. But even that would not change the schizophrenic attitude the British hold toward Hollywood--an uncomfortable blend of wide-eyed fascination and snobbish class-ridden disdain. We secretly want our actors to bring home armloads of Academy Awards, but we also want to sneer at them for trying in the first place.

For the British, the best of all wins on Monday would be supporting actor nominee Pete Postlethwaite of “In the Name of the Father.” He has it all; he’s the perfect “little guy,” the quintessential underdog, a plain man with an unglamorous name and a career unsullied by fame or riches. But if Postlethwaite does win an Oscar to take home to Britain, he should know his problems are just beginning.