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Down among the women
Is there any truth to the best supporting actress curse?
Last Updated: Thursday, February 19, 2009 | 4:44 PM ET
By Lee Ferguson, CBC News
Marisa Tomei is among the actresses whose careers were allegedly blighted by the so-called "best supporting actress curse." (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images) Every year at Academy Award time, talk of the "best supporting actress curse" starts popping up in articles and blogs. It’s tricky to pinpoint an exact date of birth for this most persistent of Oscar-related myths. As with any questionable bit of showbiz lore, the theory that an actress’s career will tank immediately following a win for best supporting actress seems to have hatched out of the ether one day, shrouded in voodoo mystery and defying all rational explanation.
If you type "best supporting actress curse" into Google, three '90s Oscar winners are mentioned with alarming consistency: Mercedes Ruehl, Mira Sorvino and Marisa Tomei.
According to Emanuel Levy's 2003 book All About Oscar, it was gossip columnist Louella Parsons who first floated the idea of an Oscar "jinx." She did so back in 1938, when Luise Rainer’s career took a nosedive after her back-to-back Best Actress wins for The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and The Good Earth (1937). Today, the jinx is most frequently attributed to women who win in the Performance in a Supporting Role category. Some cite Rita Moreno’s languishing career after her 1961 win for West Side Story, while many point to Tatum O’Neal’s fall from grace post-Paper Moon (1973); still others mention Beatrice Straight, Lee Grant and Linda Hunt as examples of women who became little more than Oscar footnotes after their one memorable performance.
Yet when it comes to settling on dates, most industry watchers agree the curse reached its apex in the 1990s, a decade in which nearly every supporting actress winner — from Whoopi Goldberg to Kim Basinger — seemed to disappear into lame roles or downright obscurity after her turn at the Oscar podium. If you type "best supporting actress curse" into Google, three ’90s winners are mentioned with alarming consistency: Mercedes Ruehl, Mira Sorvino and Marisa Tomei.
At first, it’s hard to dispute the claim that the little golden man was the kiss of death for the aforementioned trio. Most viewers would be hard-pressed to name a decent screen role for Ruehl since she scored the statuette back in 1992 for The Fisher King. Ditto for Mira Sorvino, who followed up her 1996 victory for Mighty Aphrodite with forgettable duds like The Replacement Killers (1998). No one’s endured a worse post-Oscar backlash than Marisa Tomei, whose 1993 win was met with speculation that she hadn’t really won at all. After Tomei beat out four seasoned veterans with her firecracker supporting turn in My Cousin Vinny, critic Rex Reed started a nasty rumour about presenter Jack Palance being so drunk on Oscar night that he accidentally announced the wrong winner’s name.
Mira Sorvino brandishes her supporting actress Oscar for Mighty Aphrodite at the 1996 Academy Awards. (Jeff Haynes/AFP/Getty Images) In spite of all of this supposed evidence, something about the supporting actress curse just doesn’t sit right with me. For one thing, the annual reminder of it smacks of sexism. There are several male supporting winners who’ve been just as unlucky — if you don’t believe me, visit the Internet Movie Database to see what Louis Gossett Jr. and Cuba Gooding Jr. have been up to lately.
Instead of mocking former Oscar winners and perpetuating a half-baked superstition to cast a pall over the careers of talented women, it’s time to place the blame for the curse where it truly belongs: the film industry.
It’s no coincidence that several of the supporting winners relegated to the ranks of "where are they now?" are women of a certain age. It explains Mercedes Ruehl’s move from the silver screen to TV and stage performances, and also accounts for the post-Oscar career of Dianne Wiest — another gifted 1990s supporting winner — whose most notable recent performance was a recurring stint on Law & Order.
As Emanuel Levy explains in his book, younger supporting players encounter an entirely different set of pressures. Faced with agents that expect them to capitalize on their awards-season glow, many ingénues are encouraged to take the first post-Oscar role that comes their way – often resulting in miscasting or lousy script choices, like Mira Sorvino signing on to do the middling horror flick Mimic (1997) or Marisa Tomei in the lame romance Untamed Heart (1993).
Both scenarios hint at the ongoing shortage of meaty roles for women. Marcia Gay Harden — who has said her Academy Award for Pollock in 2000 proved "disastrous" for her career — embodied this depressing reality. In a few short years, she went from playing powerhouse painter Lee Krasner to appearing as a shrewish, tight-lipped school marm in the underwhelming Mona Lisa Smile (2003).
Maybe a re-evaluation of the entire best supporting category is in order. Formed as a bit of an afterthought by the Academy in its ninth year (1936), the Performance in a Supporting Role grouping was created to accommodate women in smaller parts. As critic Molly Haskell noted in an insightful New York Times piece in 2001, the supporting category was always a bit of a mish-mash that included aging character actresses, impressive younger women and roles too small or weird to fit anywhere else. According to Haskell, the supporting actress Oscars were "supposed to be for people who would never be leads, bridesmaids who would never be brides."
Character actress Thelma Ritter, right, made a career of supporting stars like Betty Grable, left, as in the 1953 film The Farmer Takes a Wife. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images) As Haskell explains, women who used to win in this category were always second bananas to the leading lady. Thelma Ritter, who earned a record six nominations in this category, was a great actress, but she was never going to be Bette Davis. In recent decades, there’s been a marked shift toward giving the prize to rising stars. First, Meryl Streep, who actually could be a modern-day Bette Davis, walked off with a supporting prize (in 1979 for Kramer vs. Kramer ). Jessica Lange (1982) and Juliette Binoche (1996) followed suit; soon, a hot-tamale starlet like Angelina Jolie could score a statuette (in 1999). Haskell shows how meaningless the category has become while slyly calling attention to the lack of quality character parts that once ensured that the supporting race would be a tough-to-call nail biter come Oscar night.
Which brings me back to Marisa Tomei. Contrary to popular belief, she’s been working steadily ever since My Cousin Vinny, forging a gallery of vivid characters that recalls the juicy supporting roles of yesteryear that Haskell mourns. This year, Tomei returns to the Academy Awards after earning her third supporting nomination – this time, for working wonders in a small, thankless role as a stripper in The Wrestler.
When placed alongside her formidable fellow nominees – Amy Adams, Penelope Cruz, Viola Davis and Taraji P. Henson – Tomei is a dark horse, but I’m still rooting for her to win. Given how she’s been dogged by the so-called supporting actress curse, it would be fitting if Tomei was the one who finally proved this ridiculous superstition wrong.
The Academy Awards will be presented in Los Angeles on Feb. 22.
Lee Ferguson writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.
