Following the Club Rules

It is the most exclusive of all clubs, though its annual black-tie meeting is broadcast around the world to an audience of nearly a billion people. It has no official membership requirements, but the informal necessities include consummate talent, an impressive body of work, good manners and respect of your peers. Some would say it also helps if you’re British, can do accents, suffer tragically and are willing to attend a lot of banquets and talk shows.

Welcome to Hollywood’s most prestigious fraternity: the Oscar Club.

Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty and Al Pacino are old-guard members, as are Dustin Hoffman and Jessica Lange. Anthony Hopkins, Tom Hanks and Ralph Fiennes are in; Sean Penn, Steve Martin, Barbra Streisand and Eddie Murphy are out.

When you’re in, you’re really in--Emma Thompson has five nominations (and two wins). Supporting players like Judi Dench, Kathy Bates and Brenda Blethyn (six nominations total) are academy favorites while big-salaried stars like Jim Carrey, Bruce Willis and Harrison Ford (one nomination total) are still on the outside, looking in.

With ballots going out in the mail today for the 72nd Academy Awards ceremony, which will be held March 26 at the Shrine Auditorium, it may be time to usher some new names into the club. Possible nominees include Julianne Moore and Matt Damon, who are early favorites to pick up best actor nominations again this year, Moore for her role in “The End of the Affair,” Damon for “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” In fact, Moore and Damon, who already have three nominations and one win between them, are model club initiates, gifted actors with a squeaky-clean reputation for grace and professionalism.

“The academy respects talent and a willingness to take chances,” says veteran producer David Foster, who has made movies with longtime Oscar Club members Streep and Hopkins. “But remember, the voting members of the academy are working stiffs, so they also value people who bring a touch of class to the profession. If someone is a troublemaker or a pain in the ass on the set, people don’t forget that when it comes time to vote.”

Actors are the ultimate arbiters of membership in the Oscar Club. The 1,300-plus members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ acting branch choose the five nominees for all four acting categories. The academy’s entire 5,500 voting members select the winners. But the acting branch, which is three times larger than any other branch and makes up nearly 25% of all academy voters, clearly has the biggest say in the final outcome.

The academy doesn’t keep demographic information about its members--or make available a list of member names. But in many ways, it’s Hollywood’s answer to the House of Lords--an elite body of elected-for-life peers whose inscrutable choices are often shrouded in a fog of tradition.

“I’m convinced that the average age of the academy [membership] is 111,” says manager Marty Bauer, who joined the academy as an agent. “You’re talking about a very gentrified ruling class of very old voters. I mean, if King Vidor was still alive, he’d still be voting.”

Like other members, actors are invited into the academy after receiving a nomination. Otherwise, most members have to be proposed to the academy by two peers, either after having been in the industry for six to eight years and having worked on three “quality” films. Once you’re in, you’re in for life, hence the preponderance of older voters. “I got in at a relatively tender age,” recalls one prominent industry publicist. “And at the first few screenings I went to, they kept trying to kick me out because I looked too young.”

Academy Likes ‘Professionalism’

Veteran Oscar watchers say that even though “Election,” “Being John Malkovich,” “The Matrix,” “Three Kings” and “South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut” are consensus critics’ Top 10 choices, it’s unlikely that staid academy voters will embrace such adventuresome, youth-oriented films.

“The academy likes serious, distinguished professionalism,” says critic David Thomson, author of “A Biographical Dictionary of Film.” “They want men to have dignity and women to have decency. Tom Hanks gets nominated all the time, even though he’s not that profound an actor. And Meryl Streep--you’d have to see a profoundly disturbing story about her being a child abuser before anyone could undermine her credibility and appeal with the academy.”

With so many older members, the academy’s acting branch has consistently rewarded conservative, prestigious films populated with British actors. Two years ago, the best actress category featured four Brits--Helena Bonham Carter, Julie Christie, Dench, Kate Winslet--and one token Yank, Helen Hunt (who won). In 1992, the best supporting actress category had an almost all-Brit cast of Joan Plowright, Judy Davis, Vanessa Redgrave, Miranda Richardson; the lone American was Marisa Tomei, who won for “My Cousin Vinny.”

“We may have been independent for 200-plus years, but we still bow to the British at Oscar time,” says People film critic Leah Rozen. “The British are masters at stealing scenes and doing character turns, where they dazzle you and--voila--they get a supporting actor nomination. Look at Judi Dench. She was on screen for all of about 12 minutes in ‘Shakespeare in Love’ and she walked away with an Oscar.”

Actors who do accents are also heavily rewarded, whether it’s Streep in innumerable parts, including “Sophie’s Choice” and “Bridges of Madison County” or Moore in “The End of the Affair.” It’s no surprise that many of this year’s leading acting contenders are Brits and Aussies playing Americans, most notably Russell Crowe in “The Insider,” Jude Law in “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” Janet McTeer in “Tumbleweeds” and Michael Caine in “Cider House Rules.”

“McTeer obviously gives a tremendous performance,” says producer Mark Johnson. “But if that was an American actress, she wouldn’t get half the attention that Janet got because she’s an English actress doing a Southern accent.”

With the academy favoring serious, showy performances, the Oscar Club is crowded with actor’s actors willing to tackle difficult, emotional roles. “You really get recognized if you have what’s called the telephone scene, a big emotional scene that everybody remembers,” says Lions Gate Films co-president Mark Urman, referring to a legendary Luise Rainer scene in the 1936 film “The Great Ziegfeld” that won her an Oscar.

“I’d bet on Jim Carrey getting a nomination for playing Andy Kaufman. Playing a comedian tortured by demons is a perfect recipe to strut your stuff. Look at Dustin Hoffman in ‘Lenny’ or Lawrence Olivier in ‘The Entertainer.’ ”

Less is not more with Oscar roles. The more suffering, boozing, weeping and dying the better. “Tom Hanks really secured his place in the club by dying of AIDS in ‘Philadelphia,’ ” explains entertainment writer David Poland, who writes the Hot Button column for RoughCut.com. “If Tom Cruise gets nominated for ‘Magnolia,’ it’s because he was willing to cry and have a big breakdown. You have to really be daring and let go. It’s a big part of getting a nomination.”

Off-Screen Performances Are a Big Help, Too

The true academy experts--the Hollywood publicists who attend dozens of academy member screenings during the height of Oscar season--say that actors’ off-screen performances have almost as much impact as their on-screen dramatics. In recent years, Oscar hopefuls have been aided by making high-profile appearances on the critics awards banquet circuit, as eventual winner Gwyneth Paltrow did last year in support of “Shakespeare in Love.”

“It’s hard to get nominated if you’re not out doing any publicity,” says Tony Angellotti, a veteran Oscar publicist. “It’s still partially a popularity contest. Albert Finney is a classic example of someone who disappeared every time he was nominated, which signaled to the academy that he didn’t care about the award. So if he didn’t care, why vote for him?”

(At times though the academy is willing to forgive and forget. The year after George C. Scott refused his best actor Oscar for “Patton,” he was nominated again in that category for “The Hospital.” And even Vanessa Redgrave’s “Zionist hoodlums” acceptance speech for her best supporting turn for 1977’s “Julia” hasn’t stopped the academy from nominating her two more times--for best actress for “The Bostonians” and best supporting for “Howards End.”)

Talent counts, but in today’s media-saturated world, the quickest way to make it into the Club is by establishing an academy-friendly image. Take media-savvy newcomers Billy Bob Thornton and Damon. Their recognition--a total of five nominations in the last four years--stands in stark contrast to Sean Penn, who only has one Oscar nomination after 18 years of critically lauded roles. Despite raves for his star turn in Woody Allen’s “Sweet and Lowdown,” Penn’s Oscar chances are considered dim because of his outspoken attitude and disdain for awards.

“It really makes a difference if you’re out there, working the room, like Michael Caine’s doing now or Billy Bob did with ‘Sling Blade,’ ” Poland says.

Few comic actors make the Club. Martin was ignored for his bravura performances in “All of Me” and “Roxanne.” Expect the same thing to happen to Murphy this year, despite raves for his twin roles in “Bowfinger.”

Sometimes the best way to make it into the Club is by sticking around long enough to go from maverick to elder statesman. Nicholson, once a young rebel, is now an 11-time-nominated Club perennial. Robert Duvall and Vanessa Redgrave have six nominations each. This year’s sentimental favorites include Richard Farns-worth (“The Straight Story”), Michael Caine (“The Cider House Rules”), Jason Robards (“Magnolia”) and Christopher Plummer (“The Insider”).

“Michael Caine was a movie star for years, but only now that he’s a great character actor is the academy really judging him by the totality of his career,” Urman says. (Caine won once, as best supporting actor for the 1986 film “Hannah and Her Sisters.”) “That’s when you know someone is really in the Club, when everyone says, ‘Geez, he’s been terrific for 30 years. Maybe we’ve been taking him for granted.’ ”

Times staff writer Susan King contributed to this story.