In the famous farewell scene toward the end of Titanic, Leonardo DiCaprio treads water while speaking to Kate Winslet, desperately trying to stave off the effects of hypothermia. He lasts about eight minutes, which is probably a record for this sort of thing, as the glacial waters of the north Atlantic in April would normally be expected to kill off even the hardiest soul within three. But eventually the gallant DiCaprio succumbs, and drifts off to his watery sepulchre.

In last year’s The Revenant, DiCaprio had a similar bone-chilling experience, when he was forced to plunge into an icy river in the middle of winter to escape from vengeful Native Americans. The water must have been positively frigid, and he would have needed to stay submerged for a reasonably long time to escape his pursuers. Given that he had recently been ripped to shreds not once, but twice, by an ill-tempered grizzly bear, you’d assume that DiCaprio would have gone down for the count pretty quickly. Yet, this time around, defying all known physiological and hibernal-aquatic rules, DiCaprio survived the gruelling ordeal. How? Why?

To answer this question, consider the recent onscreen experiences of Matt Damon. In Interstellar, released in 2014, Damon plays a scientist marooned on a distant planet. In order to survive, he puts himself in the deep freeze, waiting for rescuers who are probably not going to arrive. He doesn’t make any serious effort to get off the planet; he doesn’t build himself a biosphere where he can raise life-sustaining kale and potatoes; he just pouts. And when help finally does arrive – because he lied about the planet having a sustainable atmosphere – he goes and ruins everything by killing off one of his rescuers and assaulting another. In the end, he perishes in a dumb, easily avoidable vehicular mishap because he doesn’t pay attention to what he is doing and doesn’t listen to other people’s advice.

Flash forward to last year’s The Martian. Here, again, Damon is cast as a scientist marooned on a planet far from home. Initially, things look quite bad, as his fellow astronauts do not even know that he is still alive back there on Mars. He is trapped on a distant planet with very little food and no obvious way of communicating with his colleagues or with Mission Control back in Houston.

Does he pout? Does he mope? Does he feel sorry for himself? Does he lie about the planet’s atmosphere? He does not. He gets cracking on his indoor potato farm. He figures out a way to let Nasa know that he is still alive and kicking. And when he does prepare to escape, he makes sure that he crosses the Ts and dots the Is before he climbs into the spaceship. His efforts are rewarded; the spacecraft does not malfunction like it did in Interstellar, and he returns home safely.

What happens to DiCaprio and Damon in these movies strongly suggests that actors, by a process neuroscientists refer to as thespianic osmosis, acquire valuable skills in one harrowing film that can be put to good use the next time they find themselves in a similar situation. By wearing warmer clothes and keeping cardiovascularly active, DiCaprio survives a dunking in ice-cold water in The Revenant that sent him straight to Davy Jones’ locker in Titanic, and Damon figures out a way to get back to Earth in The Martian, a goal that eluded him in Interstellar. In other words, there is a learning curve in films that enables actors to triumph over obstacles in one motion picture that stymied them in an earlier one.

This is not a new phenomenon. Clint Eastwood got himself lynched in High-Plains Drifter, which he made early in his career, but that was the last time a character he played ended up with his head in a noose. Diane Keaton never went home with a good-looking murderer after her disastrous soiree with Tom Berenger in Looking for Mr Goodbar. Mel Gibson got killed by a sadistic Englishman in Braveheart. When a sadistic Englishman tried to kill him off at the end of The Patriot, it was the limey that ended up dead. We learn, we live.

This is not to say that all actors acquire such skills as their careers progress. Jennifer Aniston constantly winds up with loser boyfriends. Eric Bana is always finding himself in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong gun and the wrong girlfriend. This may be because, in these cases, the learning curve is simply too steep. But in most cases, actors do develop remarkable survival skills as their careers progress. Poor home security led to the brutal demise of Keanu Reeves’ adorable little puppy in John Wick. I am willing to bet any amount of money that Russo-bad guys will not get a chance to kill Keanu’s cute little doggie in John Wick 2 because the actor will keep Fido out of the line of fire, perhaps by lodging him in an impregnable kennel or hiding him in a panic room while he goes out to butcher what few mobsters he didn’t liquidate in the original film.

Other actors are sure to follow suit. Will James Franco go rock-climbing in the wilderness all by himself in 128 Hours? I don’t think so. Will Joaquin Phoenix again get snookered by a beguiling operating system in some future film involving men who fall in love with women that do not actually exist? I seriously doubt it.

On the subject of gullible young men who get played by comely automata, this brings us to the intriguing case of Domhnall Gleeson. Last year, Gleeson made four movies that got nominated for Academy awards. Pretty impressive. Except for one thing: in every one of them, Gleeson got royally screwed. He didn’t get the girl in Ex Machina, even though he was really nice to her. He didn’t get the girl in Brooklyn, even though he was really, really nice to her. He got scalped at the end of The Revenant when he fell for the classic ornery-old-varmint-hiding-behind-the-boulder trick. And, in the most widely viewed film of the year, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, he landed a really good job, and was given a really easy assignment: blow up the planet where the rebels are hiding, using the most devastating weapon in the history of the universe.

And what does he do? He muffs the assignment, imperiling his future as a villain, and ends up crawling off to some forlorn corner of the solar system with his tail between his legs. Whether he’s in bucolic Ireland, the wilds of Norway, a galaxy long ago and far away, or the old west, this poor guy can’t catch a break.

But he will. He will. Based on the principles of thespianic osmosis I have delineated here, my bet is that in future performances, Gleeson will not get played by a duplicitous robot, will not get ditched by an aspiring bigamist from Brooklyn, and will not get dry-gulched by a back-shooting old saddle tramp hiding behind a big, stupid rock. And the next time Gleeson finds himself in a position to blow up an entire planet, those rebels are toast.

• This article was amended on 15 April 2016 because an earlier version suggested the Titanic sank in the month of February. The Titanic sank in April 1912.