addiction to performance

His films like 'Black Swan' and 'The Wrestler' obsessively explore characters consumed by their need to perform and achieve perfection, often at the cost of their sanity and humanity.

His prolific output and intensely personal melodramas dissect the compulsion to perform emotions and identities, particularly in 'The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant' and 'Fox and His Friends.'

Films like 'Boogie Nights' and 'Inherent Vice' examine characters addicted to performance and spectacle, caught in cycles of ego, reinvention, and self-destruction within entertainment and desire.