HOT GALLERY: 10 Stars Who Fell Victim to the Oscar Curse

Focus Films

Adrien Brody, Best Actor in 2003 for The Pianist

Adrien Brody gave an outstanding performance as Wladyslaw Szpilman in Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, the true story of a Jewish pianist who survived the Holocaust while hiding in Warsaw, Poland. Brody shined as Szpilman, bringing depth and humanity to a character inundated by unspeakable horror. The film was received with great acclaim, including Brody’s Academy Award.

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Adrien Brody—Today

And then, Brody kept acting. His first big follow-up was as mentally challenged Noah Percy in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village—a film which left most of us ready to throw ourselves into forest pits, joining Brody in a leafy death. He followed with another critical dud, King Kong, and since has made a career of playing ill-received, down-on-his-luck characters. (See: Splice and Hollywoodland.)

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Halle Berry, Best Actress in 2002 for Monster’s Ball

Halle Berry reached new levels of serious acting when she played Leticia Musgrove in 2001’s Monster’s Ball. (And by serious, we mean seriously depressing.) She is wife to a death-row inmate and mother to a morbidly obese child who—spoiler, and we told you it was depressing—ends up killed in a hit-and-run, Leticia reaches out to similarly damaged security guard Hank Grotowski (Billy Bob Thornton). Their lovefest earned Berry an Oscar for Best Actress, making her the first African-American woman to win one.

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Halle Berry—Today

Monster’s Ball was a career pinnacle for Berry, who chose to follow up her statuette for her depressing role with a truly depressing choice in film roles. First, she starred in the box-office bomb Gothika. Then she pounced onto the big screen as Catwoman, a wonderfully sexy role with a script equivalent to a mountain of unclean kitty litter. Things We Lost in the Fire? More like things we’d never want to find again. Today, Berry is best known for her antics in the tabloids over her custody war with baby daddy Gabriel Aubry. But she's had something of a TV comeback with CBS's Extant.

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Miramax Films

Roberto Benigni, Best Actor in 1999 for Life Is Beautiful

Roberto Benigni charmed audiences and the Academy with his delightful performance as Guido Orefice, the Jewish Italian who used his inventive imagination to make a World War II concentration camp bearable for his young son. Benigni, who also directed himself in this role, delivered a performance that only a heart of stone could ignore. The film received several international awards, including Benigni’s Best Actor.

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Roberto Benigni—Today

Benigni should have stopped when he was ahead—or at least remained standing atop his seat the night he won his Oscar. He followed up in 2002 with the painful live-action Pinocchio, and since then has only starred in or directed a handful of movies. Benigni was last seen in a role in Woody Allen’s To Rome with Love.

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Miramax Films

Gwyneth Paltrow, Best Actress in 1999 for Shakespeare in Love

Hollywood darling Gwyneth Paltrow turned in a solid performance in 1998 as Viola De Lesseps in Shakespeare in Love. And yes, perhaps she deserved a nomination. But a win against Cate Blanchett’s outstanding Queen Elizabeth in Elizabeth? What ho! Methinks this has the smell of scandal upon its sheath! (Or in non-Shakespearean terms, Cate was better.)

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Gwyneth Paltrow—Today

Sure, it’s hard to argue that Paltrow has been “cursed” since Oscar, as the actress seems to live a charmed life with two healthy children, a solid marriage to Coldplay’s Chris Martin, and a thriving business of shilling overpriced lifestyle tidbits as the Queen of Goop.com. But has she done a decent film since? With the exception of The Royal Tenenbaums—where, admittedly, Empress Goop shined—we have Shallow Hal, View from the Top, and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Paltrow has appeared as a backup player in Iron Man and a Typhoid Mary type in Contagion. Where she died and had her skullcap sawed off. At least we know she has a sense of humor about her career.

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Cuba Gooding Jr., Best Supporting Actor in 1997 for Jerry Maguire

Cuba Gooding Jr. excelled as Rod Tidwell in Cameron Crowe’s Jerry Maguire. We rooted for Rod like he was a real sports hero, cheering him on the field while nodding along to his wise words to a flailing Jerry (Tom Cruise). Cuba showed us the money performance in this role, and we loved him for it.

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Cuba Gooding Jr.—Today

Oh, Cuba. How we loved your exuberant joy the night you won your Oscar. If only you or your agents had kept up those positive feelings with some positive follow-up roles. Cuba’s post-Oscar career made like Tom Cruise leaping onto a couch—both were poorly thought-out and filled with negative repercussions. He was overly earnest in What Dreams May Come—then again, who wouldn’t be while playing an angel to Robin Williams? Then there was Boat Trip, Snow Dogs, Daddy Day Camp, and Norbit. Show us the talent, Cuba! We know you have it in you.

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Helen Hunt, Best Actress in 1998 for As Good As It Gets

Helen Hunt turned in a respectable performance as waitress Carol Connelly in As Good as It Gets. Did she deserve an Oscar for it? Was Cate Blanchett robbed of hers in 1999? (We will never forget, Cate. Never forget.) And yet, thanks to some stellar side acting courtesy of Jack Nicholson and Greg Kinnear, Hunt hugged Oscar gold that year.

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Helen Hunt—Today

Hunt followed up her Oscar wins with some equally ambivalent performances. In Pay It Forward, she managed to bore us as a vision of tragedy. In Castaway, she was upstaged by a volleyball. Since then, she directed and had an incredible performance in The Sessions, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award in 2013. Seems like things are on the up for Hunt!

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Kim Basinger, Best Supporting Actress in 1998 for L.A. Confidential

Kim Basinger shined as a femme fatale in the neo-noir L.A. Confidential. More importantly, she showed us how to seriously rock a hooded cape. The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards, with Basinger walking away with the only nod for acting in the film. This is impressive, considering it featured such critically acclaimed actors as Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey, and Guy Pearce.

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Kim Basinger—Today

Basinger has worked relatively steadily since her Oscar win, but it’s been in roles that we’d rather forget. I Dreamed of Africa? How about let’s drink some coffee, stay up all night, and say we did. Then she followed up with several roles in which she seemed utterly miscast, as seen in 8 Mile and Cellular.

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Mira Sorvino, Best Supporting Actress in 1996 for Mighty Aphrodite

Mira Sorvino turned in a charming performance as Linda Ash, the prostitute/porn star with a heart of gold in the Woody Allen comedy. Critics loved the film and Sorvino’s performance, calling the film “zippy and frothy” and Sorvino’s Ash “deeply sympathetic and appealing.”

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Mira Sorvino—Today

Post-Oscar, Sorvino hasn’t had such luck with the critics. She followed up with some seriously forgettable roles in Mimic and The Triumph of Love. (Like we said, forgettable.) She did briefly shine as Romy White in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion before diving into more low-budget fare. She does have several releases planned for 2015—here’s hoping that Sorvino can end her epic streak of meh.

Mel Gibson, Best Director in 1996 for Braveheart

As iconic Scottish hero William Wallace, Gibson directed himself to Oscar gold in 1996 with his win for Best Director for Braveheart. But the Oscar-winning film was not without its detractors. Historians were horrified at the historical inaccuracies of the film, while gay rights groups called it homophobic for its negative portrayal of the effeminate Prince Edward. It was also accused of being Anglophobic and xenophobic. Whatever would give critics the idea that a Mel Gibson film could be channeling any kind of hate?

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Mel Gibson—Today

Mel, Mel, Mel—where do we start? While Gibson turned in some solid post-Braveheart performances in Ransom, The Patriot, What Women Want, and We Were Soldiers, it was his epic 2010 personal meltdown that put the “heck” in “what the heck was he thinking?” Racist, sexist, anti-Semitic—Gibson seemed determined to hit every offensive stereotype in the Hollywood playboy when he threatened ex-girlfriend and baby mama Oksana Grigorieva, as well as the Malibu police. He reappeared in 2011’s Jodie Foster-helmed flick The Beaver as a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown. And, not surprisingly, shined in the role.

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Kevin Costner, Best Director in 1991 for Dances with Wolves

As Lt. John Dunbar, Costner showed us how to befriend Native Americans and woo wolves on a desolate post-Civil War outpost. The epic 1990 film notably beat Goodfellas for Best Picture and was a success with both audiences and critics. The film proved so popular that the Sioux nation adopted Kevin Costner as an honorary member.

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Kevin Costner—Today

Costner followed up his Oscar accolades with a string of movies so bad that it could only mean one thing—wolves were picking his projects. In Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, he couldn’t be bothered to take on an English accent as the English vigilante. Then there were the epic bombs that were Wyatt Earp, Waterworld, and The Postman. Costner has spent much of the time since taking on smaller roles—such as Denny Davies in The Upside of Anger, which he shined in. What’s next for Costner? He starred as Jonathan Kent in the latest version of Superman, Man of Steel.