I’ve seen a number of stories focusing on the supposed curse surrounding winners of the Oscar for Best Actress since supposedly their marriages appear to go bust in short order. This has naturally been heightened with the horrific timing of allegations regarding Sandra Bullock’s husband, and her having been–of course–blind sided by them. The conventional wisdom seems to be that the husbands, feeling threatened, pull away from their wives out of jealousy.
But here’s another theory: What if the husbands were just dìçkš the entire time? What if the winning of such a major award is empowering to the wife and she realizes that she doesn’t have to put up with it any more? That it gives her a sense of validation that was lacking and she realizes she’s entitled to have someone in her life who makes her feel good about herself? In a number of instances, the woman walked out on the husband, not the other way around.
Why can’t it be viewed as a blessing instead of a curse?
PAD
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Interesting counter-theory to “conventional” wisdom, but I think the reason why the “conventional” is played out is because it’s a precedent that less sophisticated people can understand: “Best Actress, yep, I give the current relationship (insert period of time here), before it’s over” People have such a morbid fascination with entertainment curses
I’ve never heard about this before, but if it’s true, I imagine it’s merely coincidence.
The fact that celebrity actressses get divorced has got to be one of the least impressive premises for a supposed “curse” anyone has ever come up with.
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The only interesting part of this is that it is in supposed contrast to the best actors winners, who seem to have much more stable marriages (Sean Penn an obvious and predictable exception). But I wonder if that has more to do with those men not being married to people who are also in the industry and/or the fact that many of the more respected male actors tend to be older than the popular female ones..
Why can’t it be viewed as a blessing instead of a curse?
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Because that doesn’t make for a good story.
Reporting fortune at the cost of another’s fortune is an affront to what we believe in as Americans. Worse, we have the need to tear down that which we once celebrated, because we come to resent that which we ourselves do not have. It comes, I think, from the foundation of our country.
We come from the poor, the down-trodden and the outcast; looking to claim that which we were denied by aristocracy. Yet when any of us climbs high enough, we resemble the aristocracy we resent, and then try to tear it down.
What constitutes was is appropriate and celebrated is held in a precariously balanced “zone of comfort”. “Good for you!…but not TOO good…”
If Ms. Bullock was shown as better for this, we’d resent her. If she’s a victim, we can empathize.
Why not? “Woman finds the strength to leave a loveless/abusive relationship and pursue a better life,” is a standard Hollywood premise when the goal is to attract more women to a movie.
It’s showbiz, they’re actresses, and they’re predisposed to shallow, short-term behavior. A long-term Hollywood marriage is a rarity.
Which is how different from the run of the mill Americans?
Meh. Your comment’s pretty shallow in the first place….
Craig is right, it doesn’t make for a good story by the standards of the gossip industry. They’re not in the business to sell empowering stories…
Also, the gossip industry is surprisingly sexist and more “conservative” (in the sense of being judgmental when it comes to morals and proper behaviour) than many people realize. Of course a powerful woman getting divorced will be played as a “curse” in their rags.
I thought blogging WAS the gossip industry.
“A long-term Hollywood marriage is a rarity.”
These days it seems a long-term marriage anywhere is a rarity.
And I’m not sure that is so awful, considering that 50 or 60 years ago lots of people trapped in dysfunctional marriages had not the nerve to leave them.
That many marriages don’t last is just human nature.
Sean Penn? stable marriage? Ummmmm, didn’t he and Robin Wright get divorced soon after he won his Oscar for Milk?
That’s the exception; the Best Actor winners usually don’t experience failed marriages, in contrast to the Best Actress winners.
That’s a bingo.
I did some checking on that. In the last ten years, several of the winners of Best Actor were in marriages that were already far longer term than the marriages of the actresses, a couple more simply weren’t married, and then there was Sean Penn.
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PAD
What if the husbands were just dìçkš the entire time? What if the winning of such a major award is empowering to the wife and she realizes that she doesn’t have to put up with it any more?
That’s a viable theory, but then the question behind the curse would be: why are so many leading actresses married to jáçkáššëš in the first place?
Why are so many women married to jáçkáššëš?
Why are there so many jáçkáššëš?
Then there’s also the possibility that because they just won a major award, the press looks into their personal life to profile it to a much higher degree, and finds some bones in the closet that they then proceed to show to everyone.
I think it’s impossible to categorize the trend as either a blessing or a curse. We obviously don’t really know these people. I think it would be just as wrong to presume that all the guys were dìçkš as it would be that all the winners were shallow, who after reaching the pinnacle, discarded the men who helped get them there through their struggles.
That said, I feel really bad for Bullock. I’ve never been a huge fan – or anti-fan, I just liked a lot of other actresses better – but nobody really deserves this humiliation, especially when she still should be basking in the glow of her award, which many never et and which she waited her whole life for.
That this allegedly occurred while she was away filming “The Blind Side” I’m sure just adds salt to her wound.
James is one of the biggest jáçkáššëš ever to cause her this embarrassment and pain right now. of course, his first wife was a pørņ star, so you’d think that would have been a warning that his tastes ran extreme.
But a heavily tattooed biker chick who lost custody of her kids and believes in White Power?
NOBODY deserves that kind of humiliation.
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Yeah, I thought that his tastes in ex-wives and mistresses was bad enough before, but then that Nazi photo shoot popped up online as well and… Wow.
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I guess some guys are just into being a living, breathing and walking single digit IQ billboard that screams “No matter how rich and successful I am, I’ll always be borderline inbred, poor white trash” in giant neon letters.
Reporting fortune at the cost of another’s fortune is an affront to what we believe in as Americans. Worse, we have the need to tear down that which we once celebrated, because we come to resent that which we ourselves do not have. It comes, I think, from the foundation of our country.
We come from the poor, the down-trodden and the outcast; looking to claim that which we were denied by aristocracy. Yet when any of us climbs high enough, we resemble the aristocracy we resent, and then try to tear it down.
What constitutes was is appropriate and celebrated is held in a precariously balanced “zone of comfort”. “Good for you!…but not TOO good…”
If Ms. Bullock was shown as better for this, we’d resent her. If she’s a victim, we can empathize.
I can’t believe I researched this, but you got me curious. And I guess it’s true… almost. Of all the winners in the past decade, only Helen Mirren stayed with her husband after winning the award (not counting those who weren’t married at the time, of course).
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I still say it’s coincidence, though. Actually, it’s not even that. I mean, how many Hollywood actors and actresses HAVEN’T gotten a divorce recently?
“it gives her a sense of validation that was lacking and she realizes she’s entitled to have someone in her life who makes her feel good about herself?”
I like think I could help her feel good about herself.
Y’all can bicker all you want to about the nature of actresses and husbands acting like jerks.
I’ll be figuring out how to slip my phone number to the now single Sandra Bullock. I think she might need a shoulder to cry on or something.
The other theory, of course, is that because they’ve won the Academy Award, we focus more on their personal lives than those of other people.
That’s an excellent point. I have to wonder: How many Best Actress nominees that *didn’t* win wound up with marital problems within a year of the nomination? It’s a more exciting headline to say “winner getting divorced” than “someone who didn’t win getting divorced.”
I suspect this “curse” is a lot like the Bermuda Triangle: The number of disasters sounds pretty impressive — until you see it’s about the same, on average, as everywhere else.
The best actress curse? Oh brother. How about the ‘Director who sleeps with his leading lady while they’re filming and sometimes they get married but eventually break up’ curse. Or the ‘Leading Man sleeps with his leading lady while they’re filming and sometimes they get married but eventually break up’ curse? Or as they refer to it in Hollywood, business as usual.
I dunno if you could say that it was an abusive relationship. She was the one who had the star power, the fame, the money, etc… If anything, all his Christmases and birthdays had come at once when he got married to Sandra Bullock. To cheat on her with an overly tatoo’d tramp and not even wear protection says that he is not-so-much abusive, as mentally defective and looking to get infected with AIDS or something.
She is well out of that relationship, but not for reasons like abuse.
Without doing any research, the one case I could remember where the Best Actress winner got divorced soon after was Hilary Swank–whose then-husband, Chad Lowe, was ALSO an actor. Sometimes there’s stress on the relationship when both parties are in the same business and one’s career is doing better than the other’s. Something like one of them winning an Oscar might tend to throw that disparity into even sharper relief and lead to the end of the marriage.
With the Bullock/James thing, though, I’m inclined to go with the “he was always a dìçk” theory.