Stripping Your Way to Success

By LAUREN A.E. SCHUKER

Photo illustration by Giacomo Marchesi

On Sunday night, actress Marisa Tomei could take home an Academy Award for her portrayal of a kind-hearted stripper in the critically acclaimed film "The Wrestler." In a tradition that dates as far back as the Oscar show itself, Ms. Tomei is the latest actress to win Hollywood acclaim for playing a character with a job in the sex industry, such as a striptease artist or streetwalker.

Four years ago, Natalie Portman was nominated for playing a young stripper in Mike Nichols's steamy drama "Closer," and just a year earlier Charlize Theron won an Oscar for her role as a real-life prostitute-turned-serial killer (in "Monster"). In the decade before that, Elisabeth Shue, Mira Sorvino and Julia Roberts all became Oscar nominees (or winners) for playing women who sell their bodies but guard their hearts -- one of Hollywood's longtime fascinations.

Taking the job was a no-brainer for Ms. Tomei, who hopes her performance will help her land leading roles in future films. "When I was offered the part, I was told it was going to be emotionally taxing -- but those things to an actor are sweet sounds. I've always felt that there was such strong creative expression in [pole] dancing, even if it's deemed low-brow entertainment," says Ms. Tomei, who wore little more than a G-string in several scenes in the movie.

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Marisa Tomei in "The Wrestler"

Why so many big screen strippers and hookers? Sex sells, and Hollywood has built an industry marketing actors' appeal. Historically, there have been fewer edgy roles for women, and the world's oldest profession -- prostitution -- offers a natural corollary to another time-tested role, the male criminal. Another reason: Inherently flawed characters, who possess what some might see as mental, moral or physical imperfections, make for more courageous acting performances.

Voyeurism certainly plays a starring role in why moviegoers love to watch women bare it all on screen, but there's also redemptive power in many of the women's performances. Seeing ladies of the evening make good represents the universal rags-to-riches story. "You can't help but root for the girl -- it's about wish fulfillment," says Garry Marshall, who directed "Pretty Woman," the hit film about one harlot's attempt at upward mobility which landed Ms. Roberts an Oscar nod. "[Best-picture nominee] 'Slumdog Millionaire' has a lot of the same things going for it."

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The very first actress to win an Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences played a woman reduced to prostitution. In 1929, the Academy awarded its highest acting accolade to Janet Gaynor for three different roles, including a sympathetic woman imprisoned on a one-time stealing charge while out soliciting in Frank Borzage's "Street Angel."

During the following decades, the Academy would nominate dozens of actresses for playing prostitutes, call girls, and courtesans of one sort or another, including Greta Garbo twice (for "Anna Christie" and "Camille"), Jodie Foster ("Taxi Driver"), and Nicole Kidman ("Moulin Rouge!"). A good many of the nominees would go on to win, including Shirley Jones ("Elmer Gantry"), Donna Reed ("From Here to Eternity"), Susan Hayward ("I Want to Live!"), Elizabeth Taylor ("Butterfield 8"), Jane Fonda ("Klute") and Kim Basinger ("L.A. Confidential").

Such roles tend to catch the eyes of critics because, more often, actresses are cast in parts as the loveable girlfriend or charming sidekick which don't necessarily allow them to show their acting chops. "There aren't and have never been a lot of great roles for women in Hollywood," says Patty Jenkins, who directed Ms. Theron in her Oscar-winning role as a killer prostitute in "Monster," which opened nationwide in early 2004. "Sadly, that creates this cliché that if a woman plays a prostitute, she wins an Oscar."

Roles like the one Ms. Theron played in "Monster" produce standout performances because they combine elements of sinner and saint in a way more often embodied in male parts featuring sympathetic gangsters or wayward cops. "It's much like the reason that there are a disproportionate number of hit men in movies," says Ms. Jenkins. "Anything exotic and dynamic is going to be overrepresented."

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Natalie Portman in "Closer"

Avoiding the middle on the spectrum from saint to sinner is precisely what helps top actresses score those accolades. "It's about going to extremes," says Jeanine Basinger, who heads Wesleyan's Film Studies department and has written a book on how Hollywood films portrayed women during the middle of the 20th century. "The way to land an Oscar as a woman is either to take off your makeup or put on a lot more. You're either a prostitute/stripper or you're a mother/nun." (As if to underline the point, Meryl Streep is up for an Oscar this year for her role as a nun in "Doubt.")

Going to those extremes of femininity can also help strengthen the roles of actresses' male counterparts -- which is why the introduction of a streetwalker character can make for a successful film, says noted feminist writer Rebecca Walker. "The more naked you have the feminine, the more easily the male can assume the traditional masculine role," she argues.

Many contemporary actresses consider themselves lucky to land roles as strippers or prostitutes after what seems like a decades-long drought for tough female roles in films. That kind of opportunity for advancement inspired Ms. Tomei to take on the risque role of a stripper past her prime in "The Wrestler," which hit theaters late last year, around the time she celebrated her 44th birthday.

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Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, "Street Angel"

Ms. Tomei only had six weeks to prepare for the topless pole dancing that her character Cassidy performs in the film. A mother by day and stripper by night, Cassidy resists romance with Randy, the wrestler (played by Mickey Rourke) because of her sense of professionalism. "The lines are so blurred between client and lover, wanting a lover and being independent, earning your own money and needing to be taken care of, servicing men and losing your own center," Ms. Tomei says. "The lines are crazy jangly."

Navigating those borders -- while wearing nothing more than skimpy lingerie -- will help her land major parts in future films, Ms. Tomei believes. "I'm hoping that with my role in 'The Wrestler,' I have identified myself as a character actress who can play complex roles and a variety of roles," she says.

Michael Radford, who was nominated for an Oscar for his 1995 film "Il Postino," also directed "Dancing at the Blue Iguana," a 2001 film about dancers who work at a Los Angeles strip club. The film, which starred Daryl Hannah, Jennifer Tilly and Sandra Oh, did not initially emerge from a script, but was rather constructed through improvisation says Mr. Radford, who let his cast choose what kind of roles they wanted to play.

And what roles did they choose?

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Elisabeth Shue, "Leaving Las Vegas"

Strippers, naturally. Mr. Radford says that his actresses were attracted by the edginess of that occupation as well as the ways that stripper roles deviated from the "vacant romantic roles" so often offered to women in Hollywood.

Like Mr. Radford's cast, Ms. Tomei was interested in exploring what real-life strippers experienced for her on-screen role. "When I was offered the part," she says, "I told [director] Darren [Aronofsky], 'I simply don't have the knockers for the job.' He replied, 'If you think that, you haven't been to enough strip clubs.' Before filming, she and Mr. Aronofsky visited a dozen strip clubs in New York and Los Angeles to research her role, talking with real women who danced for a living.

"The main thing I got out of those visits was the variety of women who dance -- there isn't just one type of stripper or even a body type. That helped me break open the cliché of the hooker with a heart of gold kind of thing," says Ms. Tomei. "My aim in the film was to honor the women I met and to represent them in a meaningful way. I wish there was a movie called 'The Stripper' because I found out so much about these women, like the physical toll that dancing takes on a stripper's body, and on her feet, that we couldn't fit into the movie."

Write to Lauren A.E. Schuker at lauren.schuker@wsj.com