Writing recently from Florence, Italy, the costume curator and historian Deborah Nadoolman Landis recalled attending an awards show in the mid-80s at which two actress nominees, Sissy Spacek and Sally Field, turned up in cardigans, housedresses and glasses. Nowadays if an actor of reputation tried walking around even at home while wearing a housedress, her personal stylist would quit on the spot.

The Internet has seen to it that actors are on all the time now, never more so than during the monthslong sprint between the Toronto Film Festival in September and the Academy Awards next month.

The 66 separate events Lupita Nyong’o attended last year during a well-planned campaign for the Oscar are characteristic of the demands faced by performers. Looking good and fashionable all the time now comes with the job description. What is fascinating for even the most seasoned observer is noting how actors, the most malleable of creatures, transform themselves for the role.

This year it’s the men in particular who bear watching, as a crop like the nominees for the Screen Actors Guild Award suddenly appear everywhere, always looking like a million bucks.

Check out Steve Carell, one-time doofus from the “The Office” and now movie star suave in Gucci or Prada; or Benedict Cumberbatch, crisply graphic as a 1920s Leyendecker illustration in white tie and tails; or Michael Keaton, impeccable and model thin at 63, in Italian wool suits with high armholes and fashionably narrow trousers; or Jake Gyllenhaal in custom-fitted Burberry; or Ethan Hawke, looking at 44 like a billboard model for Calvin Klein.