I’d Like to Thank the Academy, Team Spillovers, and Network Centrality

TLDR

The study uses Academy Award nominations for acting to examine how artistic achievement is embedded in collaborative networks, noting that individual effort is hard to assess in film but the project-based nature allows observation across multiple collaborations. The authors aim to analyze the top‑10 credited roles from 1936‑2005 films to investigate these issues. They control for actors’ personal histories and basic film traits while testing two predictions about status and collaboration. They find that asymmetric centrality in the screen‑credit network predicts star power and mediates the link between experience and artistic consecration, that actors are most likely consecrated when working with elite collaborators, and that selection into privileged teams yields cumulative advantage.

Abstract

This article uses Academy Award nominations for acting to explore how artistic achievement is situated within a collaborative context. Assessment of individual effort is particularly difficult in film because quality is not transparent, but the project-based nature of the field allows us to observe individuals in multiple collaborative contexts. We address these issues with analyses of the top-10 credited roles from films released in theaters between 1936 and 2005. Controlling for an actor's personal history and the basic traits of a film, we explore two predictions. First, we find that status, as measured by asymmetric centrality in the network of screen credits, is an efficient measure of star power and mediates the relationship between experience and formal artistic consecration. Second, we find that actors are most likely to be consecrated when working with elite collaborators. We conclude by arguing that selection into privileged work teams provides cumulative advantage.