Oscar winners have it made. They get a gold statuette, unlimited media coverage, international acclaim and, in short, a fast track to superstardom. Look at Clark Gable in It Happened One Night, Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or Tom Hanks in Philadelphia. And yet, for every Gable and Hanks there's a slew of F. Murray Abrahams who unwittingly wield their Oscar (in his case for Amadeus) like a professional hara-kiri sword and duly disembowel their careers before our very eyes. So, with the aid of some industry experts, we've come up with ten easy-to-follow pointers that just might save this year's winners from celluloid ignominy.

1. Don't Believe the Hype!

Gwyneth Paltrow's career stalled after her Best Actress win for Shakespeare in Love. She made flops such as Duets, Bounce and the ill-conceived obesity comedy Shallow Hal. She blamed the Oscar win and the false self-confidence it instilled. “I became insouciant about the things I chose,” she said. “She was in the full bloom of youth and stardom,” explains Steven Gaydos, the executive editor of Variety. “So, ironically, the combination of her Oscar win and her leading-lady status may have put her out of many people's range.”

2. But Take it Seriously

Bare shoulders and lots of red

Red frocks dominated the Oscars red carpet, with actresses demonstrating old-fashioned glamour in feathers and jewels

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“For newcomers, there's a tendency to launch themselves in larger films directly after an Oscar win,” says Sheigh Crabtree, the editor of the Academy Awards online bible The Envelope. “But it is sometimes wiser to go after those prestige pictures in the hope that lightning might strike twice.” Someone who needed this advice was Halle Berry, who followed her Best Actress win for Monster's Ball with the egregious misfire Catwoman. Accepting her Worst Actress of the Year “Razzie” Award for that film, she noted wryly, “I was at the top, and Catwoman plummeted me to the bottom.”

3. Don't Get Greedy

Oscars don't necessarily equal dollars. Actors who don't understand this are in danger of pricing themselves out of the market. “If you're an actor who usually gets $600,000 per movie, and you think that because you won the Oscar you can now ask for $5 million, then you gotta be wrong,” Gaydos says. “There's no way that Oscar means your value has gone up by at least seven times.”

4. Diversify

Giving audiences the same version of your Oscar-winning self isn't always the best idea. Adrien Brody's two leading roles after his win for The Pianist were, again, intense and harried everymen at odds with their surroundings, in The Jacket and Hollywoodland. Neither movie fared well, and Brody's career stumbled. This year's Best Actress nominee, Ellen Page (for Juno), might be heading there too, warns Crabtree. “Since Juno she's already shot two similar roles, playing the all-knowing wise-guy adolescent.”

5. Increase Your Output

If you're an actor who likes to pick and choose your roles, this might be a good time to speed up the process. The media attention surrounding the Oscars will not last for ever. “Daniel Day-Lewis has been everywhere this awards season,” Gaydos says. “He's a bigger star now because of this. So if I was his agent or manager I'd say: ‘Hey, Daniel, let's make a lot of movies and a lot of money together.'”

6. Ignore It

Treat the Oscar with contempt. It didn't help you in the past, why should it help you now? “Look at Denzel Washington,” Crabtree says. “When he won the Best Actor Oscar for Training Day he already had already been nominated three times. So by the third time it doesn't have as much of an effect, other than confirming his status as an acclaimed screen actor.” Washington continues to mix blockbusters such as Déjà Vu with more so-called serious fare such as Antwone Fisher.

7. Lower Your Expectations

Oscar winners expect their gold statuette to be a panacea for all ills, but it helps to expect the opposite. Dianne Wiest, for instance, famously remarked, two years after her first Oscar win for Hannah and Her Sisters, “All I've done since is three days on Bright Lights, Big City, as Michael J. Fox's mother. That's what an Oscar does for you.”

8. Go Political

The shallow hoopla of the Oscar can be cleverly turned on its head if you are a left-leaning actor with political passions. George Clooney has made his Oscar clout work for him, by taking his win for Syriana (and nominations for Goodnight and Good Luck in the same year) and throwing it behind this year's anti-corporate thriller Michael Clayton, for which he received a Best Actor nomination.

[]9. Think Outside the Box

After her Best Actress win for Erin Brockovich in 2001, Julia Roberts, the most powerful actress in Hollywood, had the world at her feet. She could have taken the most coveted roles available. But what did she do? “She created a family [she had twins, with her husband Daniel Molder]. And she had enough confidence to do that, and to know that it wouldn't adversely affect her career in the long term,” Gaydos says.

10. And Remember, You Ain't All That Special!

“Everyone likes to have ‘Starring Academy Award Winner' on their trailer,” Gaydos says. “However, I didn't see it on Transformers, Harry Potter or 300. If you're making a small $7-12 million dollar movie and you can get a couple of actors who have won Oscars, then it's going to mean a little something. But, generally, this isn't what fuels tickets sales. It is, at best, in the margin.”

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