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Boyle, of course, is the celebrated found object of England's hit TV show, "Britain's Got Talent," a 48-year-old Scottish church lady who astonished the country and then the world with her April 11 televised rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream" from "Les Miserables." It was the performance that stopped judge Simon Cowell in his cynical tracks, that was watched by millions on British TV and tens of millions worldwide via YouTube.

More than any development on our own "American Idol," this was the moment that seemed to make good on all the promises of reality television: a frumpy middle-aged nobody revealing her inner superstar. Here was the proof that we each carry greatness within ourselves if only the world had the patience and insight to see it. In the process, the secret resentment we in the audience hold for celebrities was temporarily held at bay. See? We're no different than they are, and they're no better than us.

Yet in the six weeks between Boyle's apotheosis and her unexpected second-place finish on May 23 on the "Britain's Got Talent" finale, the gulf between what this woman meant and what she was became filled with public argument. Boyle's late-April fashion makeover - tweezed eyebrows, a hairdo, some new frocks - was greeted by the press with both derision and defensiveness. Internet polls proliferated; everyone weighed in. "It's a 200 percent improvement," a fashion editor at the tabloid The Sun said, "but our readers think this is as far as she should go. We want her to stay one of us, not get hair extensions and a fake tan."

"One of us" - there it is. With one visit to the beauty salon, Boyle violated a crucial tenet governing the "ordinary star," the regular Joe or Josephine who is periodically plucked from obscurity to ascend to the stage of fame. She wasn't the first and she won't be the last, but she is the current titleholder, and she's learning that elevation comes with expectations.

To be an everyman celebrity is to fill an uneasy niche between ourselves and the people we worship. Worse, it's also, often, to be punished for what you reveal: That fame really does make you different. A Susan Boyle isn't allowed to get "above herself" - to actually act like a celebrity - or the realness she's praised for can suddenly seem like an act. (And if her realness is suspect, what does that say about our own?) The public, above all, is terrified of looking foolish, so the week after she entered the clinic, the top sponsored Google hit for her name was "Is Susan Boyle Faking? Vote Yes or No." She remains on the island solely at our indulgence.

But that has always been the path trodden by ordinary stars. As consumers of popular culture and as dreamers with an unarticulated bitterness toward our own lack of fame, we have always distinguished between genuine royalty and common pretenders. "Real" movie stars - from Cary Grant to Harrison Ford, from Mary Pickford to Nicole Kidman - are a special breed who seem to have been born fully formed, no matter that they're performers who all have had to claw their various ways to the top.

Ordinary people who become famous, by contrast, have to sustain an impossible persona: The amateur professional. Back in the silent-film era, Clara Bow won a small movie role in a fan-magazine contest that she slowly built into genuine stardom as the epitome of jazz-baby energy. She was "the 'It' Girl" - "It" being at least sex appeal and at most the suggestion that she actually put out. A Brooklyn girl from a deeply dysfunctional home, Bow was never allowed to inhabit the same rarefied plane as stars like Pickford, Gloria Swanson, and Norma Talmadge. Rumors of sexual excess swirled around her; her diary was salaciously read aloud in a 1930 court case. Bow entered a sanitarium a year later; she retired, worn out, in 1933, saying of fame, "It wasn't ever like I thought it was going to be. It was always a disappointment."

Fair warning, but still the great unwatched yearned to be seen, and still the entertainment industry tried to scratch that itch. When David O. Selznick was looking for an unknown to play Scarlett O'Hara in 1939's "Gone With the Wind," he sent talent scouts across the country. Atlanta debutantes skipped classes en masse to audition; one woman stalked director George Cukor, desperately claiming that "If I talk to him, he will realize I am the only Scarlett." Selznick spent $92,000, interviewed 1,400 women, gave 90 a screen test - and ultimately did the sensible thing by hiring Vivien Leigh, a professional British actress unknown in the states. Only one "real person," Alicia Rhett from Georgia, made it into "Gone With the Wind," in a small role as Ashley Wilkes's sister.

With the conquering triumph of television in the early 1950s, ordinary stars at last had a stage of their own: a literal home theater. As established celebrities eschewed the new medium, shows like "Queen for a Day" and "Ted Mack's Amateur Hour" took off, as did local variations like Philadelphia's "American Bandstand" and Boston's own "Community Auditions." All held out the promise that there were diamonds in the rough everywhere - that we all, in fact, were stars, if only for a day. Stay at the feast too long, though, and it could all be taken away, as "21" winner Charles Van Doren discovered during the quiz show scandals of the late 1950s.

The fate of the ordinary star, it seems, is to be a temporary fling rather than a lasting relationship. The latter necessitates not only genuine performing talent but a glamour that fits within accepted celebrity parameters. Conan O'Brien was a complete unknown, a kid from the writer's room, when he was introduced to TV audiences in 1993, but his unique wit quickly surfaced, and his physical "look" didn't fall outside the boundaries of the young-comedian stereotype. He wasn't an ordinary star, it turned out, but an actual star in chrysalis.

Those who bring similar talents to modern-day reality talent contests face a more paradoxical situation - they can be too good to win. Jennifer Hudson lost on "American Idol" but won at the Oscars on the strength of her voice, acting skills, and sympathetic persona. Her journey from "ordinary person" (with personal tragedies used by the tabloid press as a badge of her "realness") to mainstream celebrity is complete. Adam Lambert, the latest "Idol" runner-up, could follow a similar path, even as America briefly embraces the nice but charisma-free winner Kris Allen.

We're addicted to them both. The bona fide stars of movies or music - even those celebrities who are celebrated for nothing but their fame - are like fictional characters in a public narrative, acting out arcs of drama or comedy both within their work and in the public sphere. The ordinary stars serve a different purpose: they're the rupture in that narrative, a connective link that reminds us that celebrities are human and that we mortals have a shot at becoming famous. Why we need that reassurance - why we can't be happy with our "boring, humdrum lives," to quote "Singin' in the Rain" - is a question we each should be asking ourselves. Instead, the onus falls on the Susan Boyles of the world, fulfilling our dreams by proxy and kept on a short leash. All we want for her is to be happy and grateful, and to never, ever change.

Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com