Richard E Grant’s joyous Oscar campaign of celebrity selfies and exuberant videos has won over fans and PR experts alike – but is he a genuine ingenue or a crafty campaigner? The experts in the political machinations of the Academy Awards cannot quite decide.

From the instant Grant was nominated for best supporting actor as the rogue Jack in Can You Ever Forgive Me?, he has transported social media followers on an excitable journey through Hollywood luncheons, industry awards ceremonies, and chat-show sofas, capturing it all in wide-eyed tweets and, sometimes, blurry photos.

For an actor of three decades, with almost 100 films under his belt, Grant has, observed Esquire’s Olivia Ovenden, been “running around like an unabashed golden ticket winner”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Richard E Grant on The One Show. Photograph: @RichardEGrant/Twitter

So wide-eyed has this longstanding star’s performance been that some have even asked if, in fact, it is simply the work of a wily old pro who knows exactly how to appeal to the Academy’s love of a good Hollywood story.

Charles Gant, the features editor at Screen International, admits he has never seen such a campaign “that has been so seemingly from an outsider and one so starstruck.”

But he sees Grant’s joy as heartfelt – even if it has also been rather useful. “I think it may have started off as his own exuberance. And, then, as people responded to it, he may have been encouraged down that path,” he said.

Grant’s breathless video on Twitter outside his old apartment in Notting Hill, west London, harking back to where it all began, has been watched more than 3.5 million times. A tweeted photo of himself outside Barbra Streisand’s home alongside a letter he had sent her when he was 14, received a response from the singer herself.

Richard E. Grant (@RichardEGrant) Am levitating at this astonishing news. Thank you to @TheAcademy for this nomination in such incredible company. I’m indebted to so many people but most of all @melissamccarthy & Marielle Heller @cyefm ❤️@SearchlightUK pic.twitter.com/CIdJSMLkj1

Other videos and selfies have shown him starry-eyed and rubbing shoulders with celebrities Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Lady Gaga, Emily Blunt, Melissa McCarthy, to name but a few – “like being granted temporary membership to the A-list fame club”, he has enthused.

For an Oscar campaign Grant has broken all the rules, says Charles McDonald, a film publicist.

“That is the beauty of what he has done. He comes across as incredibly, unfashionably enthusiastic. He’s embraced it. And I think people have been caught up with the joy of what he has been experiencing.

“Whether that has persuaded lots of members to vote for him, I don’t know,” he said, adding that – “call me naive” – he did not believe it was a deliberate ploy.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Richard E Grant with Bradley Cooper. Photograph: @RichardEGrant/Twitter

Actors never know how to handle awards attention “because they don’t want to appear to be wanting to win too much, and they want to maintain a slightly dignified position,” McDonald said. So they say it’s about “the film and not me”.

“But he [Grant] is definitely, rather beguilingly, honest about the fact he is enjoying this. He’s loving it. It’s fantastic. Why wouldn’t you want to win. Of course he wants to win. And he’s being disarmingly candid about it, which people are finding very endearing.

“It’s a new approach and he is definitely bringing a very refreshing level of honesty to the proceedings.”

The PR agent Mark Borkowski describes the campaign as “beautifully uncool” and the actor as simply “joyous”. “When everything is so manufactured these days, I think audiences can smell authenticity,” he said. Grant had always been “anti-celebrity”, he added. “It runs straight through his brand, stretching all the way back to Withnail and I.

“But judging of the Oscars is always political. I’ve seen these campaigns from the inside. They are very complex and they are very American,” he added. Grant’s tweets would not have had the same traction in the US, and “it’s very difficult for English actors to win anything”.