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WHEN he
won the Oscar for best actor in The Pianist,
Adrien Brody planted a passionate kiss on the lips of
Halle Berry that seemed to shock everyone—including
Berry.
It’s been over four years now and the movie world is
still waiting for Brody to find a role equal to The
Pianist.
Brody,
who costars alongside Owen Wilson and Jason Schwartzman
in Wes Anderson’s new movie, The Darjeeling Limited,
is not alone. The Oscar landscape is chock full of
actors and actresses who reach the pinnacle of their
profession when they capture the golden statuette—and
then find themselves faced with a unique dilemma:
they’re expected to follow that up with an equally
brilliant performance.
Still searching.
Adrien Brody
(right), here with The Darjeeling Limited costars Owen
Wilson and Jason Schwartzman, has yet to find a role
equal to his in The Pianist, which won him the 2002
Oscar Best Actor that he received after planting a very
long kiss on Halle Berry (below).
And
public opinion can be swift—and cruel—when that doesn’t
happen.
“Winning
an Oscar puts a huge spotlight on your career,” said
Paul Dergarabedian, president of the box-office tracking
firm Media by Numbers. “It raises expectations, and
suddenly what an Oscar implies is that you are the best
of the best.... It creates the expectation that you will
do Oscar-worthy work.”
Berry
would know. She won best actress in 2001’s Monster’s
Ball, only to follow that up a few films later with
Catwoman. The critics, of course, pounced and
seemed to relish the opportunity to shred the movie and
Berry’s
performance. She has been struggling to find her footing
ever since, but don’t count her out yet—there is early
awards-season buzz building for her new movie, Things
We Lost in the Fire, out later this month.
Helen
Hunt, so charming and vulnerable as the waitress who
deals with the irascible Jack Nicholson in As Good as
It Gets, has yet to recapture the glow of that 1997
performance. Kevin Spacey, who delivered an absorbing
and Oscar-winning performance as a suburban father in a
midlife crisis in the 1999 black comedy American
Beauty, has also had trouble reaching those heights
again.
Other
actors who have been criticized for failing to live up
to the promise of their Oscar victories for best actor
or actress include Liza Minnelli, who won best actress
for 1972’s Cabaret; Cher, who captured the trophy
for 1987’s Moonstruck; and Roberto Benigni, named
best actor for 1997’s Life is Beautiful. In the
best supporting actor and actress categories, there’s
Joe Pesci who won for 1990’s Goodfellas; Whoopi
Goldberg who won for 1990’s Ghost; Mira Sorvino
for 1995’s Mighty Aphrodite; and Kim Basinger for
1997’s L.A. Confidential.
One of
the biggest puzzles is Cuba Gooding Jr., who won the
Academy Award for best supporting actor for the 1996
film Jerry Maguire.
“This is
a guy who, in Jerry Maguire, set the world on
fire,” Dergarabedian said. “He stole the movie.” But
follow-up films such as Snow Dogs, Boat Trip
and, most recently, Daddy Day Camp, have left his
fans scratching their heads. (Perhaps his new supporting
role in Ridley Scott’s American Gangster can help
restore some credibility?)
Peter
Rainer, film critic for the Christian Science Monitor,
said some actors have never demonstrated great range
with their acting; Pesci, for instance. “My Cousin
Vinny and Goodfellas and Raging Bull,
he’s perfect in all of them. But there isn’t a whole lot
of difference [between them]. He’s still sort of playing
the same guy in different variations.”
Rainer
said that some actors simply wear out their welcome in
doing roles that are all too familiar. One prime
example, he said, was Olympia Dukakis (best supporting
actress, Moonstruck), who plays “the same kind of
role over and over again in lesser movies.”
He said
some actors are perceived as difficult to work with, and
that might be a factor in why they don’t get enough
quality roles. But more often than not, actors who find
themselves in the role of a lifetime have difficulty
migrating to other great film roles.
Film
historian and critic David Thomson points to F. Murray
Abraham, who won the best actor Oscar for his portrayal
of the revenge-minded Salieri in 1984’s Amadeus,
or Patty Duke, who won a best supporting actress Oscar
for her role as a young Helen Keller in 1962’s The
Miracle Worker, as two such examples. “Louise
Fletcher won for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,
but she never really followed through. I think sometimes
the parts win Oscars. They are the kind of parts that if
you do well in it, somebody is going to win the Oscar
for it.”
But
these parts are sometimes so edgy, so extreme, so
unusual, that “it doesn’t give any indication how you
would cast that person in the future.”
That’s
what happened in Brody’s case, he said. “I think he’s
one of those people who is quite edgy and difficult to
cast.... I think it’s always likely that he’s going to
need special parts, unusual parts.”
Dergarabedian mused that perhaps being nominated for an
Oscar might, in the long run, be better for an actor’s
career than actually winning. He also noted that Brody
won his Oscar for a small film, 2002’s The Pianist,
and that any expectations for him to carry a movie might
be unfair.
“He
never postured himself as ‘I’m the best actor winner in
a $100-million hit.’ He won for a small film. I don’t
think he’s ever postured himself as a leading man.” |
