Those who win an Oscar find their names changed forever. Over the past year, Catherine Zeta Jones, Adrien Brody, and - yes - even Eminem, have all had the appellation "Academy Award winner" attached as a prefix.

That may not give a rapper street cred in Detroit, but the title has a gravitas recognized at more locations around the world than an American Express card. It is, after all, Hollywood's equivalent of a peerage, bestowed at a ceremony watched by millions worldwide.

Its actual impact can be harder to gauge. For high-profile actors it might cement their standing and fame, but Best Supporting Actresses from Geena Davis to Marcia Gay Harden will tell you even that's not a guarantee. After Ms. Harden won in 2001, she expected rainbows, birds singing, and "Steven Spielberg waiting patiently on the lawn," she told the Academy's official biographer, Robert Osborne. "There were no rainbows, no birds, no Spielberg."

But the story is different when it comes to the lesser-known folks without whom movies could not be made.

For the sound-effects editor, the makeup woman, and the film editor, a trip to the podium of the Kodak Theater means more than the recognition of their peers or greater career opportunities. It's a rare occasion for their work to be respected by the public - one time when they become more than a name scrolling up on the end credits of a movie. And their presence is a reminder that film is a collaborative process that relies on craftsmen as much as actors.

"Without question, the Oscar has a great effect on behind-the-scenes people," says Peter Bart, editor of Variety, "if for no other reason than they come into the spotlight for the first time in their careers."

The Monitor puts its own spotlight on four such winners, who share in their words the impact of one of the world's best-known awards on their careers.

By the time Vilmos Zsigmond received an Oscar for his work on "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977), he was an established cinematographer. Dubbed "master of light" by his peers, he is credited with ushering in an era of softer, more naturalistic use of light in filmmaking.

Immediately after the ceremony, he got many congratulatory calls, including what he calls almost hysterical messages of delight from friends in his native Hungary. "Even under Communist rule, they were watching the Oscars," he says, "and everyone in the country was so happy, they send me telegrams and all kinds of things."

Current events had helped launch his career some two decades earlier, when he and other recent graduates from the Budapest film school found themselves in the midst of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. He filmed more than 10,000 feet of black-and-white film of Russian tanks crushing his countrymen's revolt.

With the help of a sympathetic border guard, he made a midnight dash across the river into Austria, smuggling the film, stashed in potato sacks, out of the country to launch his new life.

Landing in America was not easy. He changed his name to William on the advice of an immigration official who couldn't pronounce "Vilmos." But nobody wanted to hire an immigrant with no English skills, so his first job was at an Illinois supermarket printing snapshots. He went on to make low-budget howlers for the drive-in crowd, such as "Hot Rod Action."

Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4