Post-Oscar Slump

Plane disappointed: Jamie Foxx, perhaps reflecting on the script to Stealth. Photo Simon Cardwell. Courtesy Columbia Pictures.

Most actors, when they’re just starting out, do things that embarrass them later — commercials, B-movies, porn. It’s one thing when the evidence of your early, desperate attempts at acting are acquired by the producers of talk shows so you can have a good-natured laugh at them from your currently elevated position. It’s quite another when one of your crappy movies hits cinemas mere months after you’ve won a major award, and you still have to make the rounds to promote it, even though you secretly wish you could run over the master copy with your Escalade. That’s right, Jamie Foxx: we don’t need to read your diary to know how ashamed you are of Stealth.

And, if he’s not, he should be: Stealth is just awful. Without revealing any plot points that would spoil the movie (like that’s possible), Foxx plays a supporting role to the film’s lead, a super-intelligent fighter plane that flies without a pilot, learns from its experiences and apparently has a taste for fratty punk music. (Seriously.) Like all the human characters in the film, Foxx’s gets to have one attribute: he’s good with the ladies. For this to be Foxx’s first release after his acclaimed role in Ray is unfortunate timing. However, it’s not unusual; at least in Foxx’s case, his post-Oscar stinker was made before he could use his post-Oscar juice to get himself into a better class of movie. Many actors seem to be cursed by their Oscars, in that they’re never able to match the work that brought them their career-defining success.

Havin' a ball: Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton in Monster's Ball. Courtesy Getty Images.

For example, take Halle Berry. (Please.) She won the Oscar for best actress in 2002 for her work in Monster’s Ball. She then followed it up with a bikini-intensive Bond film (Die Another Day), the sequel to a movie she sucked in (X2), a supposed psychological thriller (Gothika) and the film that swept the 2005 Razzie Awards (Catwoman). Berry’s CV has always been spotty — the Executive Decisions outnumber the Monster’s Balls about three to one — but once she found herself on equal footing with Julia Roberts and Gwyneth Paltrow, she should have had access to scripts like… well, actually, Mona Lisa Smile and View From The Top are really nothing to write home about, either.

In fact, it’s not uncommon for an Oscar win to sound the death knell for an actor’s career. Mira Sorvino, F. Murray Abraham, Helen Hunt, Tommy Lee Jones — the annals of the Oscars are riddled with winners who have yet to repeat the successes that put them on the map. Even this year’s best actress winner, Hilary Swank, spent the five years between Boys Don’t Cry and Million Dollar Baby beleaguered in such forgettable fare as The Affair of the Necklace and The Gift. Maybe she’s learned a lesson from those five floppy years: it’s okay to turn down movies that require you to pilot a spaceship into the core of the Earth.

Oscar's best friend: Tom Hanks in The Green Mile. Courtesy Getty Images.

On the other hand, nobody’s bulletproof. In the ’90s, Tom Hanks won back-to-back best actor Oscars, for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump; he followed them with a dozen more hits — from Toy Story to The Green Mile to Catch Me If You Can — and two more best actor Oscar nods. But even Tom Terrific couldn’t keep the streak going forever, as 2004 brought us The Ladykillers, The Terminal and The Polar Express. Did Hanks become less selective? Was The Terminal really that much worse a movie than You’ve Got Mail? Having seen both, I can field that one: No. The Terminal also wasn’t a worse movie than, say, Alexander, but when a Colin Farrell movie flops, we’re neither disappointed nor surprised. Because Hanks has a couple of Oscars and Colin Farrell doesn’t, we expect Hanks’s movies both to be better and to do better; perhaps those expectations are unfairly high.

Actors have reasons for choosing the material they do. Of course, some will take a gig just for the paycheque; asked what was the worst thing he ever did for money, actor and Oscar-winning screenwriter Billy Bob Thornton once said “Armageddon.” Some choose their parts because they want to work with a particular director, which may be why best actress winner Holly Hunter agreed to participate in Danny Boyle’s A Life Less Ordinary the year after he triumphed with Trainspotting. Then there’s the most unimpeachable motive of all: “I wanted to make a movie my kids could watch.” See: Susan Sarandon’s voice acting in Cats & Dogs, her partner Tim Robbins in the upcoming Zathura, Dustin Hoffman in Hook.

There are also the movies that, conceivably, might have looked good on paper, but were focus-grouped and watered down beyond recognition; Nicole Kidman’s made a pair of those with The Stepford Wives and Bewitched. The fact is that no one purposely sets out to make a bad movie, but they do happen — disconcertingly often, given the talent they employ.

So, no one hits a homer with every at-bat. So what? The vast majority of Oscar-winning actors, it seems, are okay with that. Acting is a tough and unpredictable business, and those who aren’t sufficiently thick-skinned or able to laugh at themselves generally don’t last long. (Consider Russell Crowe the exception that proves this particular rule.) It’s why Sarah Michelle Gellar (admittedly, not an Oscar winner… yet!) can roll her eyes at the little girl she was long ago, extolling the marvels of Burger King alongside Elisabeth Shue and Lea Thompson in an ’80s-era TV ad that researchers on The Rosie O’Donnell Show dug up. It’s why the film White Oleander includes a scene in which Renée Zellweger — playing a moderately successful actress — bonds with her new foster daughter by cringing at a video of The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a movie Zellweger starred in back in 1994.

So maybe Stealth won’t be so bad for Jamie Foxx. He can use the junket to remind himself of all the reasons he signed on to do it in the first place. Or he can revive the comic he once was to come up with some material on all the reasons Ray Charles wouldn’t have made a good Navy fighter pilot. Then again, Foxx is currently filming a big-screen adaptation of Miami Vice; who’s to say whether Stealth or Ray is the real fluke?

Tara Ariano co-created and co-edits Hissyfit.com, Fametracker.com and TelevisionWithoutPity.com. She lives in Toronto.