I Play Language Cop

When did an actor's performance in a movie start getting characterized as "work"? My first recollection of hearing this term is probably from some point in the 1990s--something like Mary Hart saying on "Entertainment Tonight" that some actor was up for an Oscar for "his work" in some movie. I dismissed it as an irritating kind of Hollywood press-release-ese, with its inferiority-complex-driven need to sound serious and substantial. (I guess a "performance" sounds somehow less authentic than a good day's "work.") But all the same, it's pretentious blather. There is nothing wrong with saying that a performer gives a "performance." I'm not denying it's work--of course it is work, but what is being analyzed or praised or trashed or in some way experienced by the viewer is not the work, but the performance.

That's why I get put on edge when I come across an actual writer, and not a publicist or entertainment reporter, using this term, as in this example: " ... L[aura] Linney ... does her naughtiest, most secretive work yet." That's from David Denby's review of The Savages in the December 3 New Yorker. Denby is such an effective stylist that he just gets away with this, but, gosh, I wish he had phrased it differently. Why not just say she is naughty and secretive? Saying she does naughty and secretive work makes it seem as though she's a CIA agent.