LOS ANGELES _ They might have stood on the most prestigious stage in Hollywood on Sunday night. But this year’s Academy Award winners won’t necessarily be in Oscar mode when they next pop up on a movie screen.

Because they took jobs before the awards angel landed on their shoulders _ or because they simply want a diversity of roles _ many of the winners will star in more commercial films than the ones that netted them their gold statuettes.

In April, Natalie Portman will appear in the stoner comedy “Your Highness” opposite Oscar co-host James Franco, and she’ll be seen as a dowdy bespectacled grocery store clerk in the independent drama “Hesher” that also stars Rainn Wilson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. In May, she’ll star as scientist Jane Foster in the Marvel superhero film directed by Kenneth Branagh, “Thor.”

Portman said backstage at the Oscars Sunday that she has “no idea” how impending motherhood will affect the parts she takes. “One of the exciting things about becoming pregnant is that I’m expecting a complete unknown,” she said.

Melissa Leo, the “Fighter” costar who provided the, er, most colorful moment of the Oscars during her acceptance speech for supporting actress, will make several more niche appearances on the big screen.

She’ll play a gun-toting member of a homophobic cult in Kevin Smith’s “Red State,” which the filmmaker is self-distributing in October, and she’ll star in an independent golf dramedy titled “Seven Days in Utopia” that does not yet have a theatrical distributor. (She also has a recurring role on HBO’s “Treme.”)

After years of romantic comedy roles leading up to his turn as George VI in “The King’s Speech,” lead actor winner Colin Firth is skewing a little bit more commercial than the film that landed him his statuette _ but only a little bit.

The English actor will next be seen in the adaptation of John le Carre’s “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” a film he was shooting while promoting “The King’s Speech” this season. He plays a British intelligence officer suspected of being a Russian mole. The espionage drama, whose rights have just been acquired by Universal Pictures, does not yet have a release date.

Firth this summer also aims to shoot Park Chan-Wook’s “Stoker,” a mystery drama that will put him in a film with another 2011 award-season personality, Nicole Kidman.

And Christian Bale has spent the last part of his Oscar campaign in China shooting a part as a heroic priest in the Asian period piece “The 13 Women of Nanjing,” which does not yet have U.S. distribution. But blockbusters aren’t too far from the actor’s mind; Bale will reprise his superhero role in “The Dark Knight Rises,” which is scheduled for the summer of 2012.

“When I finish the movie in China,” he told reporters Sunday, “it’s straight to Batman. Much more Batman.”

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(c) 2011, Los Angeles Times.

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MOVIE-OSCARS