Oscar Cursed... Halle Berry Edition

It had to come to this sooner or later. I think that Halle Berry's win in 2002 is one of the first that comes to mind when people think of the "Oscar Curse," yet when you examine the evidence, that notion seems to be less about Berry and her career specifically, and more about what Berry's win represented (and then failed to live up to). That's a lot for Berry to have to shoulder, and if her career has failed to build on her Oscar win, I don't think that's entirely her fault under the circumstances... but that doesn't mean that her career nosedive wasn't at least in part the result of some incredibly bad choices.

Oscar Cursed... Kevin Costner Edition

You wouldn't know it from his career today, but Kevin Costner was once one of Hollywood's biggest stars. His career as an actor, once it got off the ground, saw him starring in a string of critical and commercial hits, and his directorial debut gained 12 Oscar nominations. Of those 12 nominations, 3 were for him for producing and directing (both of which he won) and for acting. While his career did not immediately decline after that - his period of success continued unabated for about 2 years after his Oscar wins - once his career crashed, it became one of the more famous falls from Hollywood grace in recent memory. How did moviegoers go from love to indifference so quickly?

Oscar Cursed: Susan Sarandon Edition

Oh, don't think it doesn't hurt me to say so. Susan Sarandon is awesome. She's an actress who has been well-praised and yet still somehow seems just a bit underrated, at least lately. She was never a huge box office draw, but if you look through her filmmography, there are a lot of really interesting films and choices there, some purely "prestige," some fairly commercial, but there's a wide variety of character types and film genres, and a ton of praise worthy performances. The early 90s seem to have been the sweet spot in Sarandon's career, a period in which she earned four of her five Oscar nominations and her one win, at which point the really interesting roles seem to have dried up, leaving her with nothing to play but wives and mothers. Come on, Hollywood. We all deserve better than for Susan Sarandon to be playing the sorts of parts that any actress "of a certain age" could play.

Oscar Cursed: Cameron Crowe Edition

Cameron Crowe used to be kind of a cool filmmaker. Maybe never cutting edge, exactly, but "edgy" by the standards of American mainstream films. He was never a very prolific filmmaker (save in 2011, when he released two documentaries and a feature film), averaging about three movies a decade since his screenwriting debut in 1982, but most of the films that he made had a certain cachet either as cult classics or genuine classic classics. Then he was embraced by the Academy with an extremely Oscar friendly movie, following it up with another Oscar friendly movie which would net him the prize for Original Screenplay. He was sort of an "everyman" filmmaker whose work was filled with warmth and focused on character. And then he made a film which is pretty much the exact opposite of all that came before - a dark, mind-bender type thriller that ultimately polarized critics, followed by a less than successful return to warmth. Whatever Crowe had leading up to his Oscar win, he seemed to lose after taking home the prize.

Oscar Cursed: Cuba Gooding, Jr. Edition

Cuba Gooding, Jr.'s win for Best Supporting Actor in 1996 is one of the more memorable Oscar moments of the last twenty years. While most winners attempt stoicism, Gooding gave himself over completely to the joy of the moment, reacting with a refreshingly unbridled enthusiasm. There's supposedly something undignified about openly desiring an Oscar, which is why nominees always say that they're honored to be nominated, rather than that they want desperately to win (though given the intensity of some Oscar campaigns, the "want" part doesn't really need to be said). This was the reaction of someone who wanted it and wasn't afraid to let everyone see that. It was an honest reaction but it was also, like Roberto Benigni walking over the seats the following year, a bit clownish and seems even more so when viewed through the lens of his post-Oscar career. Although he didn't have a ton of film credits before Jerry Maguire, he showed an incredible amount of promise as an actor. After Jerry Maguire, with a series of middling to terrible movies taking up space on his CV, he became kind of hard to take seriously as an actor. The Oscar curse had reared its ugly head.

Oscar Cursed: Reese Witherspoon Edition

Reese Witherspoon used to be a really interesting actress. You might not know that if you judged her career solely on her post-Oscar film output, but she used to make some fairly daring choices. Yes, the seeds for her career slump were sown before she won Best Actress for her portrayal of June Carter Cash in Walk the Line (a role which, arguably, is more supporting than it is lead), but even though she tended towards some highly commercial and homogenously Hollywood fare, she was still trying to balance things out with smaller, less commercial movies and in her "teen" phase she tended towards offbeat roles rather than more typical teen fare. And then she won an Oscar and the interesting movies ceased, but the commercial success (for the most part) of her "Hollywood movies" disappeared as well.

Oscar Cursed: Adrian Brody Edition

Speaking broadly, the "Oscar curse" tends to affect actors less often than actresses, which I think is likely correlated to the fact that the actress categories tend to skew younger, while the actor categories tend to go older. The average age of Best Actress winners is 35, and bear in mind that that number is arrived at by including Jessica Tandy, who won at 80, and Katherine Hepburn, who won three times after turning 60. Of the 86 winners for Best Actress, 30 of them have been under the age of 30 at the time of their win. By contrast, the average age of Best Actor winners is 44 and only one actor has been under the age of 30 when he won. On average, the winners of Best Actor have had longer to establish themselves before winning and that foundation, in conjunction with the fact that Hollywood tends to value middle aged actors (where it usually disavows knowledge of an actress once she hits middle age), makes Best Actor winners a little less likely to find their careers going over the cliff after winning an Oscar. But that one actor who was under 30 when he won? Yeah, that was Adrien Brody.

Oscar Cursed: Michael Cimino Edition

It happens to directors, too. Top of the world, and anointed by the Hollywood establishment one day, and then forgotten and making straight to video shlock the next. Sometimes the success was a fluke in the first place, sometimes the talent is there but the ego grows too large and the work becomes weighted down by the director's hubris. Michael Cimino's rise to prominence was swift - a couple of writing credits, followed by a critically and commercially popular debut, followed by an Oscar winning classic - but his fall as even sharper. His failure, arguably, had a greater impact than his success, seeing as it not only derailed his career, but also helped usher in a quick end to the auteur era of American cinema, changing the course of Hollywood movie making for the next decade.

Oscar Cursed: Renee Zellweger Edition

There's an Oscar myth that's been floating around for a while called "the Best Supporting Actress" curse. According to the legend, winning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar is the death knell for an actress' career and sometimes her love life as well. It's a bit silly, of course, because while there are a number of women who have won Best Supporting Actress and then dropped off the mainstream radar, it's also true of winners in virtually all of the major categories. Sometimes winning an Oscar is just the beginning (remember, Meryl Streep won Best Supporting Actress for one of her earliest film roles and she's not doing too bad), but sometimes it's the peak, after which there is a sharp decline. In the late 90s/early 00s, Renee Zellweger was seemingly everywhere, but especially at the Oscars, earning nominations in 2001, 2002 and 2003, when she won for her supporting turn in Cold Mountain. Since then...