With awards season in full swing, every name in Hollywood wants to add an Oscar to their trophy case, but is an Oscar win all it's cracked up to be?
Not especially. Although Oscar-winners get to experience the rare thrill of getting to sob in front of the whole world for 45 seconds, the hangover can sometimes destroy careers forever. That's why, to mark the start of another interminable awards season, we're bringing you a list of the top 10 movie star careers that have been flushed down the crapper by an Oscar-win…
1 – The Oscar Goes to… Olivia de Havilland
Gongs for: To Each His Own, The Heiress
Notable stinkers since Oscar: Everything that followed, special mention goes to Airport '77 and The Swarm
"Olivia who?" You cry? Well, way back in the so-called 'Golden Age of Cinema' de Havilland had cracked a considerable name for herself as a promising, leading lady who was both riding high on Errol Flynn’s big swashbuckler The Adventures of Robin Hood and a considerable supporting part in that rather understated Oscar-winning picture Gone With The Wind. Nominated for a best supporting gong for the later (but losing out to fellow co-star Hattie McDaniel) her Oscar glory soon arrived with a double whammy for turns in two sappy romantic 40s melodramas. Where would Oscar take lady de Havilland next? Literally sky-high with the obligatory Airport movie (where she tried her hand at 'acting' along with three other creaky, former academy award winners) and joining an array of other wrinkly relics in Irvin Allen's honey of a horror disaster flick The Swarm (her doggy yelp at the screen after she witnesses children getting stung by killer bees is a real scream!). But the crème de la crème would surely be the depths of a guest appearance in cheesy 70s seaopera The Loveboat – a real career washout indeed!
2 – The Oscar Goes to… Michael Caine
Gongs for: Hannah and her Sisters, The Cider House Rules
Notable stinkers since Oscar: Jaws: The Revenge, Bullseye!, Blue Ice, On Deadly Ground, Blood and Wine, Get Carter (remake), Miss Congeniality, Quicksand…
You gotta admire the man for his unprecedented commitment to the job in hand. So invested in shooting soggy sequel Jaws: The Revenge, Michael Caine didn't have time to pick up his first Supporting Actor Oscar at the 1896 glitzy awards ceremony. He did, however, accept an invitation by pal Michael Winner to star in his comedy catastrophe Bullseye! Perhaps the prospect of teaming up with old mate Roger Moore was too tempting an offer to turn down? Surely – with the prestige that comes with being an Oscar-winning actor – he had smarter projects to accept than espionage stinker Blue Ice, (helmed by Resident Evil 3’s Russell Mulcahy) or to stoop to career desperations by agreeing to star in a Steven Seagal outing that was directed by the trigger-happy man himself?
But not to worry – another Oscar in 2000 (for his rather dodgy American vocals in The Cider House Rules) would surely cement some sane choices from Caine? "Oh yes," Michael Caine thought, "let's start by accepting a cameo in a shoddy remake to my archetypal Brit gangster movie Get Carter alongside the casting sensation of Sylvester Stallone as Carter." It also didn't stop Caine from being a part of the thought-provoking Sandra Bullock comedy Miss Congeniality. Let’s hope he doesn't get another golden man to add to his mantle or the recent highlights of Batman Begins, Children of Men and The Prestige could be followed by the revelation he has a burning desire to reprise his horrific performance for the up-and-coming Swarm remake.
3 – The Oscar goes to… Kevin Spacey
Gongs for: The Usual Suspects, American Beauty
Notable stinkers since Oscar: Pay It Forward, K-PAX, The Shipping News, Superman Returns, Fred Claus
On the heel of his first Oscar Spacey was quite simply unstoppable, making meaty appearances in intelligent courtroom dramas like A Time To Kill, and haunting murder thrillers like Seven, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and LA Confidential. The turn of the century brought the undeniable success of the multiple award-winning drama American Beauty, but it was his second Oscar for this film that finally derailed him. Pay It Forward, K-PAX, The Shipping News… pretentious disaster after pretentious disaster. What was going on? Even a reunion with Usual Suspects director Bryan Singer in Superman Returns turned decidedly sour at the box office.
4 – The Oscar goes to… Halle Berry
Gong for: Monster's Ball
Notable stinkers since Oscar: Die Another Day, Gothika, Catwoman, Perfect Stranger
We all hissed when we witnessed Halle's tearful Oscar acceptance speech, but in retrospect those tears can now be plainly seen for what they really were: tears of terror! Playing a character called Jinx in her follow-up film Die Another Day certainly did rub off on her subsequent career. Not only did the over-hyped, we-didn't-really-give -a-shit-anyway 'Jinx' spin-off film never see the light of day, but her crusty turns in the laudable likes of Catwoman, Gothika and Perfect Stranger ensured that she would never again be taken seriously in Hollywoodland again. Halle has gone from the acclaim of being the first black actress ever to win an Oscar as leading lady to being better known for her gutsy appearance at the Razzie Awards.
5 – The Oscar goes to… Cuba Gooding Jr
Gong for: Jerry Maguire
Notable stinkers since Oscar: What Dreams May Come, Instinct, Men Of Honour, Pearl Harbour, Rat Race, Boat Trip, Daddy Day Camp
Another over-excitable black actor to bag an Oscar. He may have accomplished some of his childhood dreams by working with the likes of Robert De Niro, Anthony Hopkins and, er, Roger Moore, but come on Mr Gooding Jr. At the expense of throwing all known credibility out the window, was it really worth it? It’s a little hard to fathom which of his films were the most deranged. Was it the pants Robin Williams fantasy drama What Dreams May Come, the trite Jerry Zucker slapstick heist outing Rat Race, or perhaps the shitty 'token black guy' part offered to him in Michael Bay’s real bomb outing Pearl Harbour? No, the wet stint with a homosexually-charged Roger Moore in Boat Trip must win hands down.
6 – The Oscar goes to… Adrien Brody
Gong for: The Pianist
Notable stinkers since Oscar: The Village, The Jacket, King Kong, The Darjeeling Limited
Brody was a relative unknown bit player before Roman Polanski plucked him for the titular part in concentration camp drama The Pianist. After collecting the Best Actor gong, Brody would have the opportunity to work with some of the most reputable auteurs in the business: M. Night Shyamalan, Peter Jackson, Wes Anderson… but didn't his over-sized honker smell a dirty rat? The Village had such a deceptive twist ending it garnered unprecedented critical outrage, King Kong bombed so badly it literally catapulted Jackson back to Skull Island and The Darjeeling Limited could be one of the most smuggest Anderson endeavours yet – THANK YOU Oscar!
7 – The Oscar goes to… Anthony Hopkins
Gong for: The Silence of the Lambs
Notable stinkers since Oscar: Freejack, Surviving Picasso, Meet Joe Black, Instinct, Titus, Hannibal, Red Dragon, The Human Stain, Alexander
Winning the Oscar arguably made Hopkins a household name, but retrospectively browsing through his IMDB file it's notable that the welsh knight has featured in more flops than hits. And by choosing to ham it up in his double reprisal of Hannibal the Cannibal, Hopkins managed to cannibalistically rid his signature role of any fear or Oscar-winning momentum. At least it went down with a nice Chianti?
8 – The Oscar goes to… Louise Fletcher
Gong for: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Notable stinkers since Oscar: Exorcist II: The Heretic, Firestarter, Invaders from Mars (remake), Flowers in the Attic, Virtuosity then both television and movie hell
A career doomed from Oscar acceptance: Louise Fletcher went straight into filming one of the worst sequels of one of the best horror films of all time and then never recovered! A bland spineless Stephen King adaptation, a lame remake of a 50s sci-fi classic, a tactless fest into haunted house horror and then straight into television cuckoo land… if only Nurse Ratched could see her now.
9 – The Oscar goes to… Marlon Brando
Gong for: On The Waterfront, The Godfather
Notable stinkers since Oscar: One-Eyed Jacks, Mutiny on the Bounty, The Nightcomers, The Island of Dr Moreau, The Score
After the crumbling production history of his post-Oscar directorial debut One-Eyed Jacks and sham of an update Mutiny On The Bounty, Brando refused to accept his second gong for The Godfather, presumably for fear The Oscar Omen would strike again. You can run but you can't hide from Oscar! The dreaded Michael Winner flick The Nightcomers beckoned, which was a film even more crazed than Colonel Kurtz had been in Apocalypse Now. Then some years (and quite a few pounds of fat) later the excruciating horror remake The Island of Dr Moreau and Frank Oz's hollow heist movie The Score sadly proved that the method man had lost his mojo.
10 – The Oscar goes to… Sally Field
Gongs for: Places in the Heart, Norma Rae
Notable stinkers since Oscar: Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, Smokey and the Bandit 2, Eye for An Eye, Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde
Sally Field is the actress responsible for the immortal "You like me…you really really like me!" acceptance speech and therefore deserves to be impaled on the proverbial steak. After signing up to dire sequels Beyond The Poseidon Adventure and Smokey and the Bandit 2, Sally would find that landing a leading role again would be a long time coming – almost 20 years, in fact: playing a middle aged vigilante in John Schlesinger's pointless thriller Eye for an Eye, until the proverbial guest appearance in ER finally beckoned. OK, she might be experiencing a bit of a career revival at the moment with Brothers and Sisters, but remember it’s on the small screen and not the big one!
[story by Oliver Pfeiffer]
Vitajex says
In your article you state that Peter Jackson’s ”King Kong’ bombed so badly it literally catapulted Jackson back to Skull Island’. Really? So… a film that, according to Wikipedia, had profits more than double it’s production costs is a bomb? ($207,000,000 budget – Gross Revenue = $550,000,000) And has a 84% rating out of 234 reviews on RottenTomatoes.com? It grossed $218,000,000 at the American box office, ending in the Top 5 for the year. The worldwide revenue of $550,000,000 put it in the top 5 worldwide for 2005.
Here’s a quote from Wikipedia:
“Thus, despite the film’s inauspicious start at the box office, King Kong turned out to be very profitable. Ticket and DVD sales combined, the film earned well over $700 million, becoming the fourth-highest grossing movie in Universal Pictures history. Its release on home video and DVD was also a great success.”
Bomb, huh? So, what dictionary are you using?
Adam Gade says
Ditto. I can’t agree with all these conclusions.
Fiona says
Oh come on. The Jacket wasn’t that bad.
Stabby McGee says
Impaled on a steak, huh?
King Jimbo says
I enjoyed The Jacket quite a lot. But that may be due to Keira playing a sort of junkie waif…, ticks all my boxes anyway.