Actors Whose Next Movie After Winning An Oscar Was Awful

Although any artist truly dedicated to their craft would say that it's all about the process and not winning awards, it would be hard to believe any actor that claimed they hadn't imagined winning an Oscar. Even the majority of viewers at home have probably dreamed of giving an acceptance speech, of making it big in Hollywood and walking up to the stage for the highest validation Tinseltown has to offer. A coveted Oscar launches the career of each winner into a distinctly new and higher-profile phase, wherein a celebrity-worshipping public immediately wonders: what's next?

The problem is that the movie industry operates on a long, stumbling timeline. It takes years to cast, scout, shoot, edit, score, and complete a movie, and often years after that for studios to finally schedule, market, and release them. So our beloved newly-minted Oscar A-listers will usually have no control over the project that follows their golden statuette, as these decisions were all made before they even dreamed about trying to fit their thank-yous into the 30 seconds before the orchestra plays them off. A dud they participated in just for the money could follow their critical darling role, and just as often studios rush to put out something that's been gathering dust on the shelf to capitalize on the actor's newfound critical acclaim. Here are some actors whose next movie after winning an Oscar was awful.

Although he rose to fame playing the fittingly monotone main character on "Mr. Robot," Rami Malek loosened up considerably to play the legendary Freddie Mercury in the Queen biopic "Bohemian Rhapsody" in 2018. Despite fair to middling reviews and suffering a troubled production that saw a switch in directors two-thirds of the way through filming, Malek would triumph at the Oscars over the likes of Christian Bale ("Vice") and Bradley Cooper ("A Star is Born). Even though Freddie Mercury himself (and a vocal impersonator) provided most of the actual singing, Malek's acting and physical embodiment of the late glam-rock legend won the day.

In a mildly ironic twist, Malek's next role would be entirely vocal, as he provided the voice of Chee Chee the gorilla in 2020's forgettable cash-grab "Dolittle." The film was absolutely excoriated by critics, who focused mainly on the bizarre leading turn from Robert Downey, Jr. and the terrible script, but also remained unimpressed by the all-star animal voice cast. In a final, fully ironic turn of events, there's a scene in which Chee Chee the shy gorilla has to sing a lullaby to calm down an ostrich, so Malek ended up using his real singing voice after all.

In 2010, Sandra Bullock rode the momentum of "The Blind Side" to an Oscar win. The film didn't entirely blow critics away, and is mostly a by-the-numbers oversimplification of an inspiring real life story. But critics and audiences agreed that Bullock's performance as a fierce and protective southern matriarch was the unquestionable highlight. "The Blind Side" pulled off the rare feat of grossing more in its second weekend than its first, and the strong word-of-mouth combined with the general consensus that Bullock was due for an Oscar made her a shoe-in when the ceremony finally rolled around.

Her next role, however, would be in 2011's "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close," a film that doubled down on perhaps the touchiest "based on a true story" material possible in contemporary America: the events of 9/11. An adaptation of a Jonathan Safran Foer novel, the movie polarized critics right down the middle and was the opposite of a "Blind Side"-like grower at the box office, fading away immediately. Ultimately, with the then-recently-expanded Best Picture category, "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" earned a nomination on the momentum of a marketing campaign and just kind of seeming like a Best Picture nominee, but the choice was controversial. Chris Kapek of The Huffington Post didn't mince words, writing, "[The movie] is not only the worst reviewed Best Picture nominee of the last 10 years, [but] easily the worst film of 2011."

Jennifer Lawrence rose to fame impossibly quickly. After a few years on "The Bill Engvall Show," she had a breakthrough performance in "Winter's Bone" in 2010 that would make her one of the youngest Oscar nominees for Best Actress ever at just the age of 20 (via The Wrap). Shortly after that, in addition to starring in X-Men movies and headlining "The Hunger Games" franchise, she would win Best Actress for "Silver Linings Playbook," the first of several successful collaborations with director David O. Russell. Her victory, still just at age 22, meant she could pick whatever project she wanted moving forward.

Unfortunately, a horror movie that she shot in the fall of 2010, months before her "Winter's Bone" Oscar nomination would put her on the map, had been shelved by the studio for a bit, and they saw fit to release "House at the End of the Street" a couple years later after Lawrence's Oscar win to maximize the box office potential of what turned out to be a roundly terrible film. Critics loathed it, finding it to be mostly devoid of actual scares and its plot mostly incomprehensible. Even the title seems like it should have a "the" at the beginning. Ultimately the bet paid off for the studio, as "House at the End of the Street" made a modest profit on a small budget, but it's the clear low-water mark in Lawrence's otherwise stellar career.

Since long before the summer of "Morbius" that wasn't, Jared Leto has spent a career perfecting a Nicolas Cage-esque penchant for appearing in films that range from critical darlings to complete and inexplicable flops. His pinnacle so far in traditional Hollywood is a Best Supporting Actor win in 2013 for "Dallas Buyers Club," transforming himself by losing 30 pounds to play a transgender woman dealing with HIV. Even with the Oscar win, his performance was overshadowed a bit by Matthew McConaughey's in the starring role — McConaughey even lost 50 pounds to Leto's 30, not that it's a competition. Nonetheless, after a strange and waltzing career Leto seemed to have found new mainstream acceptance.

His next stop was a step back in 2016's "Suicide Squad," not to be confused with the subsequent (and much better) "The Suicide Squad" in 2021. DC's first movie about the squad of anti-heroes was drubbed critically despite making a fair amount of money, and in general Leto failed to live up to the high bar set by his predecessors Jack Nicholson and the late Heath Ledger in portraying iconic Batman villain The Joker. It didn't help that "Suicide Squad" was poorly written and choppily edited together after requiring numerous reshoots. 

It's almost impossible to believe that of the dozens of actors and actresses who have played memorable roles in Quentin Tarantino's films, only one of them has won Oscar gold: Christoph Waltz. And what's even more unlikely, he's pulled it off twice, winning Best Supporting Actor for 2009's "Inglorious Basterds" and again just three years later for "Django Unchained." In a testament to his versatility, the awards were for very different roles: in "Basterds" he played the terrifyingly villainous Hans Landa, and in "Django" played the heroic Dr. King Schultz. 

Perhaps he went for the heroic role because his first attempt to follow "Inglorious Basterds" was playing another villain in the colossal flop "The Green Hornet" in 2011. A rare attempt at comedy in the increasingly straight-faced superhero genre, "The Green Hornet" was met with middling critical distaste, and generally was considered a huge letdown for a film directed by visual maestro Michel Gondry ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind") and written by star Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg of "Superbad" fame. Waltz does his best in an underwritten role as a paranoid gangster, but has virtually no chance of creating a bad guy as indelible as Hans Landa so soon after taking the Oscar home.

Does Gary Oldman have money problems? He's one of those ultimately dignified British actors like Jeremy Irons or Ben Kingsley, seemingly unable to say no to any role in an action movie or thriller that comes along, no matter how much acclaim or prestige they've gathered during storied careers. Perhaps some people just love acting that much. Granted, winning Best Actor for 2017's "Darkest Hour" was his second Oscar, so he might not have felt compelled to meet some new, higher standard at this late stage in his career.

But that doesn't make "Hunter Killer," in which Oldman trots out his American accent to play the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during a convoluted international crisis with the Russians, any less forgettable. The thriller barely registered at the box office, and critics could hardly stay awake to review it. After playing one of history's most memorable figures in Winston Churchill all the way to the Oscar podium, hardly anyone was interested in seeing Oldman play just some general in another dime-a-dozen war movie. If they were, they'd have plenty of superior choices like "Air Force One" or "Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy" from Oldman's own filmography to choose from.