Oscars 2018: Inside Oscars ‘curses’ ... why winning an Academy Award isn’t enough for some stars
WINNING an Oscar should make a Hollywood star’s career. But some actors have fallen victim to post-Academy Award ‘curses’, which almost ruined their careers and love lives.
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BEING nominated for an Academy Award can make or break a Hollywood career.
But sometimes, actually winning an Oscar can be unexpectedly damaging to an actor’s professional and personal life.
Box office bombs, critical flops, and no job offers at all ... winning an Oscar did some stars more harm than good in the years that followed.
Two Oscar “curses” are said to exist in Hollywood — one affects a winner’s career, the other their romantic lives (dubbed the “Oscar love curse”).
Professionally, Halle Berry, Cuba Gooding Jr, Renée Zellweger, Mira Sorvino, Catherine Zeta Jones and Adrien Brody, among others, have fallen victim to the post-Oscars “curse”.
Oscars are meant to define an actor’s career but in these cases, ended up derailing it.
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News Corp Australia movie critic Leigh Paatsch said post-Oscars slumps had more to do with poor career decisions and ageism in Hollywood than a so-called “curse”.
For male nominees, Paatsch said bad roles after an Oscar came because “you either won in a soft year or you were a one-trick pony that found a role of a lifetime”.
“If you’re a woman, you can also apply ... if you won after the age of 30, it (an Oscar) is completely meaningless,” Paatsch added.
Screen siren Halle Berry perhaps said it best. “People win Oscars, and then it seems like they fall off the planet,” Berry told The Guardian in 2015.
“And that’s partly because a huge expectation walks in the room and sits right down on top of your head.”
Berry was the first African-American actor to win the Oscar for Best Actress in 2002, for her role in gritty drama Monster’s Ball.
What followed was a string of box office and critical failures — notably, Catwoman, which is widely considered one of the worst movies ever made and earned her a Golden Raspberry (aka the Oscars of bad movies) for Worst Actress.
Definitely not the sort of accolade she was used to.
“The moment I won the Oscar, I felt the teardown the very next day,” Berry told The Guardian.
“I thought, ‘If I’m going down, I’m going down taking chances and daring to risk’.”
Paatsch said Berry’s Oscar win came too late in her career to have an impact on the sorts of roles she was cast in afterwards.
“Halle Berry was pretty much in her mid 30s when she won for Monster’s Ball. The window was closing on her career when she won that,” Paatsch said.
“(Catwoman) did much more damage than any kind of mythical ‘curse’ did. It’s all about how you play your cards across your entire career.”
Jerry Maguire star Cuba Gooding Jr’s acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actor is often singled out as one of the Oscars’ memorable moments (yep, he punched the air and told the audience “I love you! Everybody!”).
But Gooding didn’t receive a single job offer in the 12 months that followed his 1997 Oscar win (he has since made a comeback with his role as OJ Simpson in The People v OJ Simpson: American Crime Story).
“I won the damn Oscar and went a year without an offer and now it’s crazy. It’s crazy,” Gooding told News Corp Australia in 2014.
So what did he make of his post-Oscars snub by Hollywood?
“It was an overpowering personality,” Gooding said. “I mean, s***, you saw when I won what I did: I damn near jumped around like a crackhead! I didn’t even know how I could control the energy. I’m a very physical, energetic guy.”
What Oscar voters liked about Gooding’s Jerry Maguire performance — the same kind of “energy” he showed onstage during his Oscars speech — ended up turning Hollywood off him.
“The thing that put me in handcuffs,” Gooding said. “That’s right. That’s it.”
Mira Sorvino was named Best Supporting Actress for her role as a prostitute in Woody Allen’s Mighty Aphrodite — a part which should have made her a leading lady in 1996.
Instead, Sorvino’s post-Oscar resume included a string of commercial and critical disappointments: The Replacement Killers, Mimic and Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion, a comedy which became a cult hit years later.
But in reality, it was disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein who truly derailed Sorvino’s acting career.
She, along with more than 50 other actors, last year accused Weinstein of sexual harassment and intimidation. Sorvino alleged the former Miramax boss had black-listed her from Hollywood after she rejected him, including having her barred from a role in The Lord of the Rings because Weinstein told director Peter Jackson she was a “nightmare”.
“There may have been other factors, but I definitely felt iced out and that my rejection of Harvey had something to do with it,” Sorvino told The New Yorker.
After Lord of the Rings director Jackson confirmed Weinstein had told him not to cast her, Sorvino tweeted: “Just seeing this after I awoke, I burst out crying”.
“There it is, confirmation that Harvey Weinstein derailed my career, something I suspected but was unsure,” she added.
For others, Oscar-worthy roles just never came again after they won.
Adrien Brody won Best Actor for Holocaust drama The Pianist in 2002, then followed it up with a string of poor choices including a King Kong remake and Predators. These overshadowed Brody’s credible work in Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited and Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris.
Catherine Zeta-Jones achieved Oscar glory with the role of Velma Kelly in big screen musical Chicago, which nabbed her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2003.
Like Brody, Zeta-Jones failed to follow up that career-defining performance with any decent parts afterwards, including straight-to-DVD romantic flick The Rebound and another musical, Rock of Ages.
Her Chicago co-star Renée Zellweger faced a similar post-Oscars slump after she won Best Supporting Actress for period drama Cold Mountain in 2004 (she had been nominated for — and lost — Best Actress in the years prior for Chicago and Bridget Jones’ Diary).
A series of forgettable parts followed for Zellweger: A rehash of her Bridget Jones role in sequel The Edge of Reason, Miss Potter, and about a six year break from Hollywood entirely. After her hiatus, Zellweger looked almost unrecognisable, which led to “what happened to Renée Zellweger’s face?” tabloid headlines.
But is it as simple as ... you win and Oscar and your career is done?
“The Oscars, business wise, have no influence or ripple effect after they have been won and run,” Paatsch said.
“Only a particular type of film becomes an ‘Oscars’ film, it’s very rare you’ll get a film that grosses more than $US150 million ... most often, we’re dealing with films that are quasi-art house films that are released strategically to try and get an Oscars campaign.”
Paatsch said the favourites to win at Monday’s 90th Academy Awards — Frances McDormand (Best Actress nominee for Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri), Gary Oldman (Best Actor nominee for Darkest Hour), Alison Janney (Best Supporting Actress nominee for I, Tonya) and Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri nominee for Best Supporting Actor) — would escape the dreaded post-Oscars curse.
“Alison Janney is essentially a TV actor who found the perfect role for her (in I, Tonya),” Paatsch said.
“Sam Rockwell is one of the greatest character actors alive, so it’s not going to hurt him in any way.
“It’s a very soft year. The Oscars mean so little in the scheme of how show business works now.”
OSCARS LOVE CURSE
IT’S not just Oscar winners’ professional lives that have copped a beating after they won Academy Awards — sometimes, it has also spelled disaster for them personally.
Particualy, for actresses.
This so-called “curse” stems back to the golden era of Hollywood. Even serial romantic Elizabeth Taylor was a victim ... twice.
Screen legend Taylor won Best Actress for Butterfield 8 in 1961, and divorced husband Eddie Fisher three years later. Then, in 1967, she won Best Actress again for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf? and divorced Richard Burton in 1974.
Barbra Streisand was also a victim of the post-Oscar love curse, earning a statue for Funny Girl in 1969 and splitting from husband Elliott Gould two years later.
Angelica Huston suffered a similar fate after winning Best Supporting Actress for Prizzi’s Honour (1986). Her relationship with then-boyfriend Jack Nicholson ended in 1990.
Helen Hunt’s marriage to The Simpsons’ voice actor Hank Azaria was over two years after she won the Oscar for Best Actress in As Good As It Gets (1998).
Angelina Jolie divorced Billy Bob Thornton in 2003 — a mere three years after she was named Best Supporting Actress for Girl, Interrupted.
Halle Berry divorced ex-husband Eric Benet in 2005, three years after winning her historic award for Monster’s Ball.
Million Dollar Baby star Hilary Swank’s marriage to Chad Lowe ended two years after she won Best Actress for her role as a female boxer.
Reese Witherspoon is another victim, earning a Best Actress statue for Walk The Line in 2006 and splitting from her then-husband Ryan Philippe a year later after a much-publicised cheating scandal involving Australian actor Abbie Cornish.
Sandra Bullock won Best Actress for The Blind Side in 2010 and divorced her then-husband Jesse James that same year, after he admitted cheating on her with multiple women.
“I messed up really bad on a global scale and everybody knows it,” James said, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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