A-List: Worst Post-Oscar Careers
By Josh Spiegel
March 5, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Well...no. Not always. Perhaps not even for this year's presumed winners. If the night shakes out with Jeff Bridges, Sandra Bullock, Christoph Waltz, and Mo'Nique winning, their respective careers will take wildly divergent paths. Bridges will be in two highly anticipated December releases, even if they're very unique: the Tron sequel (and can someone tell me why this should be a big deal? Does anyone love the first Tron?) and the Coen Brothers' remake of True Grit. Waltz is starring as the villain in The Green Hornet opposite Seth Rogen and Cameron Diaz, a movie directed by Michel Gondry. Bullock is taking time off. Mo'Nique is going to go back to hosting her BET talk show. The very idea of an Oscar guarantees nothing, in terms of potential quality.
This week's A-List is going to go through the sordid past of some recent Oscar winners, and profile five men and women whose careers post-Oscar went down, down, down. Some went down quickly, and some took their sweet time. There are a couple of obvious names, but there are a few that may surprise you just a bit. Hopefully, none of the people who win this year are going to find themselves with a similar fate; I'm worried most for Waltz, a brilliant actor who may have a juicy role in The Green Hornet. Conversely, Seth Rogen is starring as The Green Hornet, in a script he co-wrote. Cameron Diaz is playing his love interest. Something doesn't compute. Still, I hope all the best for Waltz and all of this year's Oscar winners. Read the following, friends, and learn from their mistakes.
Kevin Costner
Kevin Costner has had a very up-and-down career, it's safe to say. Even before he won an Academy Award for his 1990 hit Dances With Wolves, Costner starred in a few popular movies, such as Bull Durham, No Way Out, and the classic Field of Dreams. Also, after his win, he starred in the summer blockbuster Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and the Oliver Stone drama JFK. Unlike some Oscar winners whose careers go south, Costner had a very solid follow-up. But after 1991, things slowly but surely went down the tubes. He was the title character in Lawrence Kasdan's Wyatt Earp, a movie which, for some people, has not yet ended. He also starred in The Bodyguard, a movie that was initially successful, but is now only known as that movie where Whitney Houston sings I Will Always Love You. But it all paled in comparison to the most awesome failure of the past 20 years.
Waterworld. Don't cringe. We have to talk about this movie, folks. Here is the movie that epitomizes, still, what the most bloated summer blockbuster can look like. I know some people are as hateful of the latter Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, but when it comes to movies about water, there's only Waterworld. As if this flop wasn't enough to kill Costner's career, he came along two years later with The Postman, a movie that attempted to be as heady and successful as Dances With Wolves and came up woefully short. With Thirteen Days and The Upside of Anger, Costner has slowly tried to move back into the limelight, if only by subverting his shaggy image. Still, he's got a long way to go from wiping away the memory of him on that dock in Waterworld at the very beginning. I'm not sure he'll ever be able to fully make anyone forget about that movie.
Halle Berry
Here is a woman who made history at the Oscars. Halle Berry became the first African American woman to win the Best Actress Oscar when she won for her wrenching performance in Monster's Ball. This was one of her first truly serious roles in a movie, after appearing in X-Men, Swordfish, The Flintstones, and other classics. After Monster's Ball and her Oscar, Berry appeared in the final two X-Men movies (granted, the second film is highly regarded), and the last James Bond movie with Pierce Brosnan as the title character, Die Another Day. But then there were the true howlers: Gothika, Perfect Stranger, and the very worst of all, Catwoman. This was a movie meant to reclaim another superhero icon, and why not Berry? She was hot, she was talented, and she'd done enough work in comic-book films.
If you're like me, and you've seen this movie...well, you know how badly it fails. Catwoman goes from being so bad it's bad, to so bad it's funny, to so bad it's sad, to so bad it makes you angry. What's more, her most recent attempt at a prestige picture, Things We Lost in the Fire, flopped at the box office and with critics, despite not being nearly as terrible as some of her other recent films (and seriously, if you haven't seen Perfect Stranger, it's hilariously awful). Berry's career has almost completely stalled, with her last major appearance coming in X-Men: The Last Stand, a bad movie that, admittedly, would've sucked with or without her. Still, her being in movies these days isn't a sign of anything good. She's one of the prime examples of Oscar being an unkind guardian.
Robin Williams
Before I get on Robin Williams' case, I want to take one year of his career post-Oscar and consider it disqualified for being too damn good: 2002. He made Death to Smoochy (yes, I am the only person in the world who doesn't hate this movie), Insomnia, and One Hour Photo that year. All three films are, at the very least, unique from his other roles, most of which are either broad comedy or Oscar bait. Here's a bit of his career after winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Good Will Hunting: RV, Patch Adams, Jakob The Liar, Bicentennial Man, House of D, License to Wed, August Rush, Old Dogs, Night at the Museum, and Man of the Year. More than almost anyone else on this list (almost), Williams has made a whole bunch of crap since 1997. He's made good movies, or been involved in a few (such as his cameo in A.I.), but he has been in a lot of crap.
The Robin Williams that most people knew and loved is gone. The man who made us laugh with his insane stand-up comedy in the 1980s and early 1990s has vanished. As soon as he realized that people only laugh at him for his rapid-fire patter, even if it's not funny, he went with that on every talk show in the land, and made boatloads of money. Recently, he starred in World's Greatest Dad, a movie that's been highly praised in general, but specifically for Williams' performance, both nuanced and unique. Still, his name in a movie, unless it's animated or a drama, is cause for concern among almost everybody who goes to movies these days. I mean...Old Dogs. OLD DOGS. How much worse does it get?
Cuba Gooding Jr.
Oh, it gets much, much worse. Cuba Gooding Jr., Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner for Jerry Maguire (and the man who gave the acceptance speech that will probably be replayed for years to come), has had so many bad movies in the nearly 15 years since his win. Let me throw out a few titles for you, everybody. Radio. Norbit. Home on the Range. Instinct. Chill Factor. Pearl Harbor. Rat Race. Boat Trip. Snow Dogs. Daddy Day Camp. Yes, that's right. The last film I named is Daddy Day Camp. He was in the sequel to Daddy Day Care. He replaced Eddie Murphy in a movie that Murphy, star of The Adventures of Pluto Nash, didn't want to star in. He lent his voice to one of the myriad Land Before Time direct-to-DVD sequels, as a character named Loofah. I am not making any of this up, folks. This is the career Cuba Gooding Jr. has
Is there any career that went south as quickly as it did for this man? Yes, he had a supporting role in As Good As It Gets and wasn't bad, but after that, his livelihood as a respected film actor went out the window. If there needed to be another nail in his proverbial coffin, it came with Snow Dogs. I don't mean to denigrate Cuba Gooding Jr., the man. He seems like a nice, self-aware guy. That doesn't mean that his filmography is above being made fun of. How can you avoid making fun of a man who starred in Boat Trip and Snow Dogs, movies whose titles live only to be mocked? The biggest example of an actor who doesn't have an Oscar, so much as an albatross around his neck, Cuba Gooding Jr. has become the ultimate poster boy of post-Oscar failure. Even Robin Williams hasn't gone that far.
Kevin Spacey
Spacey has won two Academy Awards, one for his supporting work in The Usual Suspects and one for his lead role in American Beauty. It's after the latter award that his career took a downturn. He followed up American Beauty with movies like K-PAX, The Shipping News, 21, Pay It Forward, The Life of David Gale, Superman Returns (technically not a flop, but not a well-liked movie), and Fred Claus. Spacey remains a relatively well-respected actor, partly for his heavy involvement in the theater, as he's currently the artistic director of the Old Vic, a famed London theater, and plans to be for quite a few years to come. This kind of artistic integrity manages to separate Spacey from his recent film work; also, it helps that he's been in other modern classics like Glengarry Glen Ross and Se7en.
Still, Spacey's post-Oscar career has floundered. Most of these films have been made specifically to capitalize on Spacey being seen as an Oscar-worthy actor; if he's in it, then the movie must be as good as his past performances. Often, this isn't the case. Also, his most passionate project, Beyond The Sea, turned into a big flop, despite his impressive performance. Maybe the problem was that Spacey was years older than his co-star, Kate Bosworth (hopefully, the sarcasm isn't too subtle there), and that he was also years older than Bobby Darin ever was. After this movie tanked, Spacey became a lot more involved in the stage, not the silver screen. Though his career hasn't been the most terrible among the five actors listed here, we should all be thankful that he's taking things slow.