The Oscar love curse or Oscar curse is a superstition that the woman who wins the
Academy Award for Best Actress
The Academy Award for Best Actress is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance in a leading role in a film released that year ...
will have her boyfriend, fiancé, or husband cheat on her or divorce her soon after. It has also been applied to the
Best Supporting Actress and to the Best Actor winner. A 2015 study found that divorce rates of female Oscar winners and nominees did not increase, but that divorce rates of male Oscar winners and nominees did.
Another version of an "Oscar curse" is that if an individual wins either a Best Actor/Actress or Best Supporting Actor/Actress award, their career will collapse shortly thereafter. Sources indicate that the originator of the superstition was
Luise Rainer
Luise Rainer ( , ; 12 January 1910 – 30 December 2014) was a German-American-British film actress. She was the first thespian to win multiple Academy Awards and the first to win back-to-back; at the time of her death, thirteen days shy of her ...
, who after winning two Oscars for best actress in the 1930s had fewer roles in film afterwards which she apparently blamed on receiving the awards.
The 2015 study found the opposite to be true: "male and female Oscar winners and Oscar nominees appear in more films following their Oscar experiences than do other actors".
See also
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Nobel Prize effect
References
{{Superstitions
Academy Awards
Curses