Top 10 Unique Post-Oscar Acting Careers

After winning an Oscar, an actor’s career is usually marked by the question: Did they live up to the award or not? Here are 10 Oscar-winning actors who have gone in completely different directions.

10. Donna Reed-Riding the Highs and Lows of Television

Best Supporting Actress for From Here to Eternity (1953)

Reed’s career after winning her Oscar was mostly in television. In 1958, she starred in The Donna Reed Show, which was produced by her husband. While Reed won her Oscar playing a prostitute, her show was so wholesome that, according to TV.com, it “won many awards from various civic, educational, and medical groups due to its handling of topics like adoption, prescription drug abuse, and home safety.” Since this was the 50’s and that’s what was popular on television, it was a big hit. Her other notable TV role, on Dallas 20 years later, was much less well-received. She was hired as a replacement actress for the character of Elle Ewing when original actress Barbara del Gettes left for health reasons. Accepting a different actress for the same character was not something audiences were prepared to do and the network had to fire Reed and bring del Gettes back due to popular demand.

9. Jamie Foxx-Multitalented Singer/Songwriter and Radio Host

Best Actor for Ray (2004)

Before he got into acting, Foxx was studying to be a classical pianist which helped him bond with Ray Charles so well during production as the two got to know each other by playing duets. After winning the Oscar for his eerily lifelike portrayal of Charles in Ray, he returned to music by releasing an album of original music. He’s since released two more and was even briefly considered as a replacement judge on American Idol after successful guest stints. He also hosts a show on Sirius radio called the Foxhole.

8. Gwyneth Paltrow-Lifestyle Blogger, Country Singer, and TV Guest Star

Best Actress for Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Paltrow’s Oscar for “Shakespeare in Love” was her crowning moment as the proverbial prom queen of Hollywood. Initially, Paltrow made career choices as if she wanted to backup her statuette with another by taking the kinds of roles that practically beg for a nomination: A suicidal poet in Sylvia and a tortured mathematician’s daughter in Proof. Since then, she’s seemingly given up on trying to validate herself as a high profile actress to an unforgiving press (the daughter of Hollywood royalty, she’s been derided as a product of nepotism). She started a lifestyle website, goop.com, which has gained a lot of notice. She also returned to the Oscars this past year, not as a nominee, but as a song performer for Country Strong. Throw in her hit appearances on Glee and Saturday Night Live this past year, and it’s fair to call her a reinvented woman.

7. Kevin Spacey-Real-life version of Jim Carrey in The Majestic

Best Supporting Actor for Usual Suspects (1995) and Best Actor for American Beauty (1999)

In 2003, Kevin Spacey was appointed the Artistic Director for one of the most prestigious theaters in London with no less daunting a task than saving it from insolvency.  The Old Vic Theater, which has operated since 1818, was slated for demolition by a new property owner just five years earlier. Spacey has picked up the occasional Hollywood role, but most of his focus for the last eight years has been on acting in and producing plays for the Old Vic. He also produced and acted in his dream project in 2004, Beyond the Sea, about the life of Bobby Darin. He even accompanied the film’s release with his own CD covering the crooner’s hits and followed it up with a musical tour that summer.

6. Luise Rainer-Pioneer for Discontented Stars Everywhere

Best Actress for The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and The Good Earth (1937)

Some of the more cynical Oscar recipients (George C Scott, Alan Arkin, Sideways screenwriter Alexander Payne, etc.) have bemoaned the idea of competition or been otherwise apathetic. Luise Rainer, on the other hand, is unique in believing that the actual act of being voted on by a body of her peers as actress of the year was what ruined her career. “Nothing worse could have happened to me,” she’s said. Rainer felt that the increased fame and the way she was treated as a star left her disconnected from other actors she was used to collaborating with and she also felt that the studio put her in overly commercial projects. She complained about this loudly to the press which led to a mutually beneficial divorce between her and employer MGM Studios. Although she was lured to the screen occasionally, she retired from acting. She spent the rest of her life maintaining a 43-year marriage, writing articles, travelling, producing art, and sporadically dabbling in theater. This past March, she turned 101.

5. Whoopi Goldberg-Stand-up Artist and Media Icon

Won: Best Supporting Actress for Ghost (1990)

Whoopi Goldberg was once on a conventional path to stardom as an actress with roles in diverse high-profile films such as Soapdish, The Player and The Color Purple. Her Oscar win in Ghost was the culmination of that route but it was nearing the end of that phase of her career.  Casting directors today are probably not even considering Whoopi for prestige parts in films because she’s not really known as an actress anymore. With stints hosting the Oscars, participating in the annual charity event Comic Relief, doing stand-up comedy and co-hosting The View, she’s more of a media icon nowadays. She also took a role on a TV show, Star Trek: The Next Generation, simply because she was a fan of the show.

4. Richard Dreyfuss-Professor Emeritus

Won Best Actor for The Goodbye Girl (1977)

An Oscar-winner at the age of 29 (only two Best Actor winners have won the award before turning 30), Dreyfuss has immersed himself in academia where his primary interests include civics, education, government and rhetoric. He was a scholar-in-residence at England’s ultra-prestigious Oxford University where he served as a Senior Research Advisory Member of St. Antony’s College. In addition, he served for 12 years on the Board of  the National Constitution Center and founded the non-profit institute Dreyfuss Initiative dedicated to reviving civic conversation in American culture and improving the teaching of civics in elementary education. He still acts occasionally but he openly admitted in interviews for his film Poseidon that he now just acts for the money and that his passions lie elsewhere.

3. Glenda Jackson-Member of Parliament

Won Best Actress for A Touch of Class (1973) and Women in Love (1970)

Like many actors, British actress Glenda Jackson used her high profile to spout out on various political opinions. Unlike most other actors, however, she took it upon herself to get into politics. An outspoken opponent of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party, Jackson decided to run for Parliament in 1992 and won. There were some expectations that she would coast through parliament based on her previous fame as a movie star, but she immediately took an interest in transportation and was eventually appointed Junior Transportation Minister in 1997. She also unsuccessfully ran for the Mayor of London in 2000.

2. Gig Young-Double Murder-Suicide

Won Best Supporting Actor for They Shoot Horses, Don’t They (1969)

Young’s tragic post-Oscar path was certainly unique because he’s very likely (Hollywood was a sordid place of scandal in the Golden Age so you never know) the only Oscar winner to commit murder  (his fifth wife three weeks into marriage) followed immediately thereafter by his own suicide. Young had a long history with alcoholism and psychological problems before and after his Oscar despite having a long career as a character actor and leaving behind a trail of friends and admirers. His low point was being carried off the set of Blazing Saddles in an ambulance on the first day of shooting (suffering an alcohol-induced delirium tremens), forcing production to replace him with Gene Wilder. His Oscar later became the center of a legal battle when his sole child, Jennifer Young, fought his agent for ownership of the physical statue. Jennifer Young is currently producing a documentary on Gig that has yet to find a distributor.

1. Grace Kelly-Princess of Monaco

Won Best Actress for The Country Girl (1954)

Gig Young’s downfall into suicide made for an immensely fascinating story, but to end the list on a more upbeat note, I’m going to give the top spot to the woman who met Mr. Right and became a princess. Quite literally. When her film, The Country Girl premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in France, she was invited for a photo session with the prince of Monaco whom she would later marry. This marked the end of a 5-year acting career that’s as remarkable an output as anyone could have in such a short span. By marrying Prince Rainier, she also saved the tiny principality (if you can’t find that country on the globe, try a magnifying glass: it’s the second smallest country in the world) from dissolution. A 1918 Treaty stipulated that if the Prince of Monaco couldn’t produce a male heir, then it would be surrendered to France. Rainer’s first fiance was rumored to be infertile and when the Prince met Grace Kelly at Cannes, he was supposedly in search of a new bride.

Top 10 Best Picture Winners Weren’t That Great

Only 83 films have won Best Picture to date and the general sentiment is that winning the big prize ensures that your film will have a place among the classics. Here are 10 films that won the grand prize that are not considered classics today:

10. The Broadway Melody, 1929

Since sound was introduced into the movies in 1927, film studios realized the potential almost immediately of combining films with musical numbers. Released two years after the first talkie, The Broadway Melody was MGM’s first big-scale musical number. Heavily promoted by studio head Louis B. Mayer, the cliché-ridden film would win the 2nd best picture Oscar in history among what film historian Tim Dirks notes as, “some of the weakest films in the history of American cinema, reflecting the chaos of the transition from silents to sound films.” Although MGM would be synonymous with the best of the musical genre some fifteen years down the road, the early years of MGM’s musical branch were films so formulaic that they didn’t even bother changing the name for subsequent installments. They were simply known as The Broadway Melody of ____ with the year of release in the blank.

9. Cimarron, 1931

Cimarron is one of just three Westerns to win an Oscar. The film centers around a restless newspaper editor seeking to start a new life with his family in the newly opened territory of Oklahoma and covers a 40-year span in which he deserts his family but eventually comes back to fight for Indians’ rights. Despite its eventual pro-Indian stance, the film squanders its good will to modern viewers through its highly stereotypical representation of the Jewish tailor and the African American servant characters. The film has eight out of fourteen good reviews on rottentomatoes.com which clears it from being the worst-reviewed best picture winner (The Broadway Melody has 38%) but even the good reviews aren’t particularly enthusiastic about the film. One of the positive reviews, by Dennis Schwartz, says the film is “badly outdated, overly sentimental, the performance by Richard Dix that was well-received back then now seems overblown,” but he inexplicably gives the film a B-. If there’s a bright spot to the film, it’s the performance of Irene Dunne who was able to survive the transition to talkies through what most critics agree was a great performance.

8. Cavalcade, 1933

Cavalcade chronicles the story of a British family over two generations as they cope with war, societal change, and the sinking of the Titanic (one of the family members was on board). This film won in a year when Hollywood started to get comfortable enough with sound that many films broke out of the mold and revolutionized their genres, whether it was the message picture (I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang), the musical (42^nd Street), the big budget action film (King Kong) or the risqué comedy (She Done Him Wrong). Ironically, it was also the first year in which the overproduced British period piece won the top prize. There’s no doubt that Hollywood owes a great debt to England’s grand theatrical tradition and its immensely talented pool of classically trained actors but the Academy’s being blind-sided by anything and everything British has led to most every baffling decision the Academy has made for best picture, which will be a recurring theme here.

7. You Can’t Take it With You, 1938

Frank Capra was the 1930′s version of Spielberg and Scorsese rolled into one. He was the most respected, revered and commercially successful director of his time. His visions of homespun Americana gave hope to millions during the Great Depression. You Can’t Take it With You was Capra’s third Oscar-winning film in the course of 6 years, and it was no doubt a popular film. The film, however, is something like Capra’s 7th or 8th best film today behind such classics that came nowhere close to winning an Oscar as It’s a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or Arsenic and Old Lace. The film centers on the zany antics when the granddaughter of an eccentric free-spirited professor invites her straight-laced in-laws for dinner. Aside from being overshadowed by so many other Frank Capra films, the film is also  unremarkable because it’s not very much of a departure from the Pulitzer-prize winning stage play by George Kaufman and Moss Hart.

6. Mrs. Miniver, 1942

During World War II, Hollywood sought to assist with the war effort however it could. Top directors such as John Ford, John Huston and more made propaganda pictures and Hollywood produced wholesome images of homespun Americana and family life (Meet me in Saint Louis is a prime example) so that moviegoers could be reminded at the movies exactly what they were fighting for. At the same time, this was the Golden Age of film in which American cinema was really advancing as an art form. The Oscars during these years pitted the wholesome yet unremarkable films against the edgier film noirs, screwball comedies, or melodramas.  Mrs. Miniver, although depicting the idyll and noble life of a British family on the advent of war, was one such unremarkable film. It did make for some good propoganda. Winston Churchill wrote a thank-you note to MGM head Louis B. Mayer saying that the film was “Propoganda worth a hundred battleships.”

5. Around the World in 80 Days, 1956

This film is a fun, scenic romp best known for its endless string of cameos by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Cesar Romero, Charles Coburn, Red Skelton, Marlene Dietrich, and many more. It’s speculated that the film won only because all the actors with cameos voted for their own film. Even if the film is more popcorn entertainment than a great film, credit still should be given to producer Mike Todd (one former husband of the late Elizabeth Taylor) for his sheer ambition. Employing a record 33 assistant directors, Todd personally jetted to Pakistan, India, China and Thailand to meet with Kings and princes to secure the most luxurious locations he could find. Getting half of Hollywood to appear in his film wasn’t easy either: Todd spent months asking any actor with even a mild curiosity about the film to appear in a small role. In fact, it can be said that this film originated the very concept of the cameo.

4. The Greatest Show on Earth, 1952

This is a film that centers around the trials and tribulations of a travelling circus (the title comes from the motto for Barnum and Bailey’s Circus). Audiences hear about the film and the storied career of its director, Cecille B. DeMille, every year because the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Golden Globes is named after him. Upon receiving the award, for example, Spielberg paid tribute to The Greatest Show on Earth by saying that he practically owes his career to this film having recreated the famous train crash scene in his living room over and over as a kid. Even if we take Spielberg at his word (he’s known to embellish his stories), he’s in the minority of people who took anything inspirational from the film. When I did an informal poll among other film buffs in preparation for this list, they all insisted that this was the most forgettable entry be included. Like Around the World in 80 Days, the film is more spectacle than it is timeless. Outside of that one train crash scene, the film doesn’t offer much of the grand sights of a film like Around the World in 80 Days. Unless you’re a humongous circus fan you should just catch them live when they’re in town.

3. Oliver!, 1968

To be fair, British Director Carol Reed did produce at least one classic in The Third Man almost 20 years before he was handed a make-up award for this film. The adaptation of the classic Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist had the necessary pedigree of Britishness (see the Mrs Miniver entry) and came during a decade in which musicals were in fashion with the Oscars (3 other films from the 1960′s also won Best Picture). Ironically, among the other two front-runners that year, The Lion in the Winter also had the British pedigree and Funny Girl was a musical.

2. Chariots of Fire, 1981

Today, the film is only remembered for its synthetic score that’s been reused for athletic montages in practically every movie since. The tale, examining the conflicting journeys to glory of two British gold medalist runners in the 1924 Olympics, isn’t so much a bad film as a massive surprise in a crowded field of great films that included Raiders of the Lost Ark, Reds, Atlantic City and On Golden Pond. Roger Ebert wrote that when he met the producers and the directors of the film at that year’s Cannes film festival before the film had found an American distributor, they told him that they didn’t think their film would even play in America, let alone win an Oscar. Ebert also speculated that in today’s movie market, it would likely have not survived more than one weekend in the theaters.

1. The English Patient, 1996

An epic love story set at the close of World War II centering on the search for the identity of a plane crash survivor, the film isn’t necessarily bad but it has been ignored by pretty much every list of great films (Empire Magazine, National Society of Film Critics, the AFI, Time Out, etc.) . The film is mostly remembered today for being the basis of a Seinfeld episode in which Elaine is driven insane in trying to avoid being ostracized for being the only one of her friends who doesn’t like the film. It’s worth noting that as Elaine’s friends in that Seinfeld episode love the film, it opened to some remarkably good reviews. Susan Stark of Detroit News famously called it the best film she’s seen in 16 years of reviewing cinema. While Best Picture winners of the 1990′s like Forrest Gump (which beat out Quiz Show, Pulp Fiction, and The Shawshank Redemption) and Dances with Wolves (which beat out Goodfellas) are now almost universally hated for taking the trophy away from those beloved films, The English Patient seems to have faded into oblivion.  Even though some might hate it for taking the honor away from Shine or Fargo, both nominated that year.