AN OSCAR CAN MAKE YOU, IF IT DOESN'T BREAK YOU FIRST.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Writer

Now that Oscar nominations have been announced, there's one huge question left hanging in the air.

Who's going to be this year's Marisa Tomei?

Not to pick on the lovely Tomei, who stunned everyone when she beat four overseas legends - Miranda Richardson, Joan Plowright, Vanessa Redgrave and Judy Davis - and won the 1992 Oscar for best supporting actress for (ahem) ``My Cousin Vinny.''

Tomei has gone on to a decent career as a working actress and was even nominated again three years ago for her fine work in the indie ``In the Bedroom.'' But she's never quite recovered from the cruel joke that she won her Oscar only because the wacky Jack Palance couldn't read Redgrave's name on the envelope and, instead, blurted out the last nominee he had spoken.

Winning an Oscar can breed those kinds of myths. It can also convince supporting actors (and the studios hiring them) that they're really leading players, and it can mislead stars into thinking that the public will gladly pay to see them in anything, no matter how misguided the movie may be.

Winning can also be simply a fluke, the right part at the right time (see Hunt, Linda; and Matlin, Marlee). It can change careers for the better, giving actors the power to make great movies (Tom Hanks) or waste their cachet making movies that are sometimes popular but usually artistically bankrupt (Nicolas Cage, who Sean Penn famously dismissed as someone who was ``no longer an actor; he's a performer'').

What Oscar most certainly isn't: a career booster.

``There was a time when stars were stars, and some of those stars got Oscars and they continued to have careers and flourished,'' says Syracuse University film professor Richard Dubin. ``Now, what are we down to? Twelve minutes of fame? Then it's over and out. Winning an Oscar guarantees nothing in terms of the future of your career.''

Just ask any winner.

``People asked me, 'Where do you go from here,' '' says Hilary Swank, reflecting on the expectations surrounding her after she won the best actress Oscar in 2000 for ``Boys Don't Cry.''

``At first I didn't know what they were talking about,'' Swank continues. ``And then I realized really great roles in really great stories are really few and far between. This is what people were talking about: You're an actor, you need to work. You can't wait five, 10, 25 years for something to jump off the page.''

Hence, Swank made duds like ``The Core,'' and TV movies before returning to prominence and another Oscar nomination this year in Clint Eastwood's ``Million Dollar Baby.''

Swank's ``miraculous'' turnaround and Tomei's second nomination prove the folly in writing off careers prematurely. But then there are those Oscar winners who, through bad luck, bad judgment or an unfortunate combination of both, have flamed out and failed to make good on our expectations.

Standing at the winner's podium proved to be their career pinnacle.

``That's why these people should just enjoy the moment,'' says Syracuse's Dubin. ``And hopefully they have a mom with a nice mantle.''

Here's to the, um, winners:

1. Luise Rainer, best actress, ``The Great Ziegfeld'' (1936), ``The Good Earth'' (1937). The so-called ``Oscar curse'' originated with Rainer, a passable German stage actress who knew how to cry.

Her tears were all too real after the public and industry backlash that accompanied her back-to-back Oscar victories in the mid-'30s when she bested the likes of Bette Davis, Carole Lombard, Greta Garbo and Barbara Stanwyck.

Rainer's career imploded immediately afterward, and she left Hollywood a year later.

``One was 'acclaimed' now, therefore, one's doings, one's motives, one's every utterance seemed to have greater dimension and therefore suddenly became suspect,'' Rainer said at the time. ``It seemed harder to continue one's work quietly.''

2. Louise Fletcher, best actress, ``One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' (1975). Every major actress turned down the part of the monstrous Nurse Ratched, dropping it into the lap of Fletcher, who had auditioned repeatedly for director Milos Forman over a six-month period.

``Herein is the yang side of the women's liberation movement,'' producer Michael Douglas said in an interview. ``God forbid a woman play an evil character.''

Wrong. These actresses knew that Nurse Ratched was fearsomely vile and despicable and feared that, post-``Cuckoo,'' no one would be able to separate the performer from the part. Taking the role amounted to career suicide.

Fletcher delivered the goods and won the Oscar. But though she has worked steadily in the subsequent years, the projects have been uniformly forgettable.

``It'll make you wonderfully happy for a night,'' Fletcher says of winning the Oscar. ``But don't expect that it'll do anything for your career.''

3. Cher, best actress, ``Moonstruck'' (1987). ``You don't do movies to get Oscars or get awards, you just do them because you really love doing them.'' - Cher, 1987.

Apparently Cher didn't really love doing them, because after winning the Oscar she spent more time making fitness videos and late-night infomericals than movies. She has made only three pictures since ``Moonstruck.'' Maybe her interest waned, maybe the offers dried up. She is, after all, Cher - not someone who easily disappears into a character.

Then again, she played a wallflower in ``Moonstruck.'' That's like putting David Spade in a tuxedo and making him the next James Bond.

No. Blame it on the infomercials.

4. Geena Davis, best supporting actress, ``The Accidental Tourist'' (1988). Many supporting actresses disappear into oblivion. Davis became a star, winning another Oscar nomination with the feminist call to arms ``Thelma & Louise'' - and then disappeared into oblivion, thanks to back-to-back movies she made with her then-husband, Renny Harlin.

``Cutthroat Island'' (1995) was horrible even for a pirate movie, a genre that is singular for churning out clunkers. It was also a silent bomb, almost single-handedly killing MGM. The couple's follow-up, ``The Long Kiss Goodnight,'' tanked, too.

``Stars don't operate in a vacuum,'' Dubin says. ``They get advice, and a lot of it is bad. In Geena Davis' case, the advice came from her husband.''

Davis divorced Harlin two years later.

5. Whoopi Goldberg, best supporting actress, ``Ghost'' (1990). From center stage to center square on a game show. She did make it back to the Oscars 12 years later - as host.

6. Kevin Spacey, best supporting actor, ``The Usual Suspects'' (1995), best actor, ``American Beauty'' (1999). Spacey's post-``Beauty'' resume says it all: ``Pay It Forward,'' ``K-Pax,'' ``The Shipping News,'' ``The Life of David Gale'' and the ultimate vanity project, the Bobby Darin biopic ``Beyond the Sea.''

``He's this generation's Rod Steiger, a character actor who thought he was a leading man,'' says Damien Bona, author of the comprehensive Academy Awards history book ``Inside Oscar.'' ``That's always the problem when a character actor wins in the lead category.''

Spacey will keep working - he was just cast as Lex Luthor in ``Superman Returns,'' but thankfully he probably won't be able to green-light any more self-important movies.

7. Cuba Gooding Jr., best supporting actor, ``Jerry Maguire'' (1996). It's possible that Gooding may one day return to form. Then again, the movie he's filming now, ``End Game,'' co-stars Burt Reynolds and James Woods, so don't hold your breath.

While it would be easy to say that Gooding took his ``Jerry Maguire'' catch phrase, ``Show me the money,'' too much to heart, a desire for substantial paychecks might not completely explain choices like ``Boat Trip'' and ``Snow Dogs.''

``There's a scarcity of serious roles for African-American actors,'' says Tom O'Neil, author and host of the awards Web site www.goldderby.com. ``It's an obvious problem. Lou Gossett had the same trouble after 'An Officer and a Gentleman.' ''

8. Helen Hunt, best actress, ``As Good as It Gets'' (1997).

``I think just as people in my generation look back and wonder, 'Who is Luise Rainer?' so will people in 25 years say, 'Who was this Helen Hunt who won an Oscar?' '' says ``Inside Oscar's'' Bona.

Enough said.

9. Roberto Benigni, best actor, ``Life Is Beautiful'' (1998). Benigni used his Oscar clout to make his dream project. Unfortunately, Benigni's dream had him playing Pinocchio. He was almost 50 at the time.

Again: Enough said.

10. Halle Berry, best actress, ``Monster's Ball'' (2001). Three years after she blubbered through her Oscar acceptance speech, Berry headlined ``Catwoman,'' the movie nominated for the most Razzie awards, the barometer of cinematic stinkiness.

``That's some kind of record,'' Gold Derby's O'Neil says. ``Unfortunately for Halle, it's not exactly the distinction she was looking for when she won.''

It never is.

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

drawing, 7 photos

Drawing:

Marisa Tomei

Photo:

(1 -- cover - color) Are they worth it?

Sometimes winning an Academy Award isn't all it's cracked up to be

AMPAS 

(2) Luise Rainer

(3) Louise Fletcher

(4) Cher

(5) Geena Davis

(6) Whoopi Goldberg

(7) Kevin Spacey