Nobel Prizes and awards for saving lives. Rare. Entertainers receiving awards. Endless.

[Bluenorthwest]

34. I mean professionally. Popularity is not their stock in trade, it is for entertainers.

Anything that remains on TV gets ratings or it would be gone. That's also just business. It's possible to be a huge novelist and never give an interview or be photographed. It's possible to invent a vaccine while being a hermit. It is not possible to be a film actor who is invisible.
It's one of the few perks of that industry as an industry that others will pay attention to such things as awards because others feel ties to films and to performers and to music in ways that they simply do not feel for that guy who said that thing about string theory. Look at 'American Sniper'. Passionate feelings on both sides on that film. Like sports, there is a team aspect to these things, people see them as having meanings beyond the individual. That is the attraction for those who watch those shows, and that is inherently different in the arts than it is in other fields. People feel they as audience members are part of a film or a play, and they are correct to feel that way. They do not feel that way about some new medication that was developed which they take for their illness. Fact is, people take life saving drugs and never even ask who invented it. Why don't they start fan clubs for them? They could. But they don't. Perhaps they should.