5 Oscar Nominated Actors Who Have Disappeared from Hollywood

By starrymag | May 24, 2018

5 Oscar Nominated Actors Who Have Disappeared from Hollywood

Getting started in Hollywood is often the easy part for some actors. All it requires is that breakout role. Staying in the limelight, however, is the difficult part. Not all actors are able to keep the offers coming in even if they have won, or were once nominated, for the highest accolade in the industry.

These 5 actors are Oscar winners and nominees who disappeared despite once reaching the pinnacle of Hollywood.

 

 

Adrien Brody

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Adrien Brody won an Oscar in 2003 for his amazing performance in The Pianist. After the win, Brody became the golden boy of Hollywood, starring in King Kong, Hollywoodland, and The Darjeeling Limited. In recent years he has featured more as a supporting role in films such as Midnight in Paris and The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Brody spoke to The Guardian about his career, and revealed that after his Oscar win his career didn’t exactly go to plan. Yet he is still grateful for the opportunities he had. “There’s no guarantee that you deserve anything in this life, and there are an infinite amount of gifted people that do not ever receive any opportunity or recognition,” said Brody.

 

Adrien Brody in The Pianist

 

 

Hilary Swank

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Hilary Swank won two Best Actress Academy Awards for her performances in Boys Don’t Cry and Million Dollar Baby. Despite putting her in the rare group of actors who have won more than one Academy Award, Swank has struggled to find roles in recent years. Her most recent high profile role was as a supporting character in Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky. Swank’s absence in Hollywood can in part be attributed to forces that she cannot directly control. US Weekly writes that she put her career on hold in order to take care of her sick father.

 

Swank explains why she was fired from Beverly Hills 90210

 

 

Jennifer Tilly

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Jennifer Tilly was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as Olive Neal in the film Bullets over Broadway. Her other film roles include Let It Ride, Made in America, Bound, and Liar Liar. Today, Tilly is best known for providing the voice of Bonnie Swanson in Family Guy.

Yet while the film roles may have dried up Tilly stays active in many different ways. One of which is as a professional poker player. In a recent interview with PartyPoker, Tilly said she is looking forward to hitting the felt in London this year. “I really enjoyed playing this event the last time I was here,” said Tilly. “It was fun to match wits with some of the best female poker players in Britain.” Tilly became famous in the world of poker after winning the WSOP Ladies Championship in 2005. It seems that her successful second career is fast become her number one priority.

 

Tilly talks about Bullets Over Broadway

 

 

Helen Hunt

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Helen Hunt won an Academy Award for her performance in As Good as It Gets. However, after that, she had an up-and-down career. While she was phenomenal in Cast Away, her career started to slide when she starred in some less-stellar movies such as Dr. T and the Women, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, and What Women Want. After the film roles dried up, Hunt tried her hand at directing, and directed and starred in Then She Found Me. According to Looper her directorial debut was a flop, with one critic calling her performance “a little too whiny, a little to angry to be very sympathetic.”

Looper talks about what happened to Helen Hunt

 

 

Cuba Gooding Jr.

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When Cuba Gooding Jr. won an Oscar for Jerry Maguire it looked liked he had the world at his feet. Unfortunately for the actor the win got to his head, and the most in demand actor became best known for appearing in straight to DVD titles. Gooding explained what caused his career downfall in an interview with News.com.au. “I was told by Cameron Crowe (the director of Jerry Maguire), ‘Your job is only to work with great directors,’ and I didn’t listen,” said Gooding Jr. “It didn’t resonate with me, so I said ‘no’ to Amistad, I said ‘no’ to Hotel Rwanda and the list goes on and on and on … Finally, directors were probably afraid to offer me anything.”

Gooding Jr. has made a comeback through starring as O. J. Simpson in American Crime Story: The People v. O. J. Simpson, for which he was nominated for a Prime Time Emmy.

Cuba Gooding Jr. winning an Oscar in 1997