Oscar winners brings on the tears

Awards shows have a way of bringing out the emotional mess in an actor. Vanity, neediness, exhibitionism -- we’ve seen it all, from Sally Field’s wildly ridiculed “I can’t deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!” to Kate Winslet’s gooey meltdown at the Golden Globes last year, when she looked in need of psychiatric paramedics.

Cynics will tell you that these coveted statuettes are nothing more than a marketing tool, a way to drive up box office and stars’ salaries, while jaded insiders will mention careerism, egomania and the cult of celebrity. But none of this does justice to the ridiculously prominent -- indeed mythic -- role these awards play in our cultural life.

Indulge me for a moment while I propose a theory of acting awards. My contention is that these accolades are not ancillary to the art of acting but instead shed light on a central dynamic -- one, you may be surprised to hear, that implicates us ticket-holding bystanders every bit as much the performers themselves.

In a nutshell, actors make explicit thoughts and feelings that are normally kept implicit. They slip inside a writer’s fantasies and enact what has been silently imagined, from kitchen-sink actions to the most furtive wishes. Stealth truth-tellers, actors bear a fugitive guilt for their impersonations -- they’re operating beyond the long arm of societal law, which explains perhaps the mix of condemnation and awe they have inspired throughout history.

“When I work, I get dirty and sloppy offstage,” Maureen Stapleton (a supporting actress Oscar winner for “Reds”) once remarked. “I don’t take as much care of myself personally. It could be plain old-fashioned laziness, but I think it’s a moral tendency. I feel I don’t have to bother as much about matters I don’t really care about.”

This laxity for convention is just the tip of the anxious iceberg. Actors enjoy an enviable freedom yet their liberty is not without penalty. Apprehension is everywhere. Will the new drama be a flop? What if their fans grow indifferent? When will time pull the plug on all this heretical fun?

But there’s another less obvious yet equally powerful source of worry: the threat of being punished for exposing the hidden parts of ourselves, for tattling on our collective secrets, for transgressing that line of what is permissible to show. In short, for doing everything that an Oscar-worthy performance is supposed to do.

The ensuing fear of reprisal, of being called out for objectionable behavior, is, of course, one of the psychological hazards of the profession. Applause, that custom of expressing approval by the clapping of hands, is a way of soothing this primal terror, of assuring actors that their game of make-believe hasn’t offended, that those in attendance aren’t going to renege on the conditional agreement (you’ll act out, we’ll for the time being consent). Ovations, like awards, are an endorsement -- as well as a reminder of who ultimately holds the cards.

In his fascinating book “Stage Fright: Its Role in Acting,” Stephen Aaron, a clinical psychologist who has taught acting at Juilliard, connects these ideas with stage fright, a condition that is common to all modes of performance but most intensely experienced by actors. It’s easy to understand the reason. The arduous journey of technical mastery is personalized in a unique way. To make vivid the subtext of their roles, actors must tap into what has been repressed within themselves, mining their own conflicts to more potently draw out the conflicts of their characters.

Stage fright isn’t just about knocking knees and blown lines. The classic loss of control -- memories that seize up, mouths that refuse to work -- is symptomatic of deeper fears. Guilt, elusive yet ineradicable, lurks in the shadows of memorable character work, which invariably entails the dangerous rustling of secrets.

Great dramatic writing, from “Oedipus Rex” on, delves into shame -- yours, mind and ours. Performers are required to stand naked in this unflinching light, baring all for the sake of art. It’s a fearsome psychological business, and the attendant paralysis that afflicts the profession can hit as easily in solitary studio trailers as it can backstage.

In an interview for the anthology “Actors at Work” by Rosemarie Tichler and Barry Jay Kaplan, Meryl Streep used the Yiddish word shpilkes (“rampant anxiety”) to describe the terror that can strike on a film set. “I go nuts inside. I sweat and worry and say, ‘I need a moment.’ I go into my trailer, and there’s nothing there that will help me. Nothing. It’s a horrible way to make a living.”

Perfectionism is a notorious albatross. Careers have been shipwrecked by an intolerance for anything less than the ideal, as those reading between the line of the lives of Orson Welles and J.D. Salinger can tell you. But imagine how this destructive loop can strangle when an artist’s very being is the starting point.

When we praise an actor for his or her “vulnerability,” we are indirectly acknowledging this borrowing of the self for a fictitious other. Critically acclaimed actors know how to excavate from within to register psychological truths without. Ironically, it’s a process that can leave performers feeling stripped of every defense even as it leaves them, in their fantasy of all fantasies, draped in Oscar glory.

Ellen Burstyn, who I thought would make an ideal sounding board for these ideas, acknowledged that, in a profession in which the vast majority of its practitioners is unemployed, the Oscar offers an unparalleled form of recognition. (“They no longer say Ellen Burstyn. They say Ellen Burstyn, Academy Award-winning actress. It’s like a title.”) She added, however, that “there’s nothing more validating than the realization that you have been given a gift. And when you have the sense of that gift coming through, that’s the most humbling.”

When we tune into the Oscar telecast, part of us is tuning in to our gratitude for these brave, frontline storytellers who keep our feelings alive and flowing. Aristotle taught us ages ago the necessity of this artistic provocation of emotion, the way it serves as a safety valve for society, a homeopathic remedy for restoring balance.

Yet this thankfulness of ours isn’t without ambivalence. When we refer to someone in the real world as “so dramatic,” it’s not usually meant as a compliment. Proper decorum needs to be patrolled -- hence the cruel delight in the media’s taunting of actors who go overboard during their acceptance speeches. Award shows are not emotionally equal. The Grammys gets its voltage from musical acts and Lady Gaga’s architectural couture. The joy of the Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes and Tonys comes from watching actors, singled out in front of their peers, melt in a puddle of soul-quenching validation. Or better yet, manage to appear graceful and insightful with a lump in their throat.

Momentous as it is when a playwright or novelist wins the Pulitzer Prize, the effect just isn’t the same. Writers have an eye on posterity; thespians, even in an age in which film and TV have overshadowed the stage, chase fame within their eras. Although we can marvel at Laurence Olivier’s technique through DVDs, his name means less to us over time than the names of the dramatists that incited his genius.

Actors may receive more fanfare than other artists during their lifetime, but their celebrity is written on the wind. In the romantic era, there was a wonderful convention of drama critics eulogizing great actors on their retirement. William Hazlitt, for example, would turn poetic on such occasions, noting how “these partings with old public favourites” reveal to us “the shortness of human life, and the vanity of human pleasures. . . . They are links that connect the beginning and the end of life together; their bright and giddy career of popularity measures the arch that spans our brief existence.”

That sense of time passing -- of history landmarked -- pervades the Academy Award ceremony, even more acutely than the red-carpet fixation of who’s wearing who. Ego and humility, talent and chance, hysteria and silent feeling -- these polarities that define us are magnified in our actors, who when they cross into the Oscar-winning circle, are assured once and for all that their pains haven’t been in vain.

charles.mcnulty@latimes.com