Strange Cases of Cursed Movie Roles

Hollywood is dense with stories of the paranormal and unexplained, and one area that seems to be pervasive is the idea that some movie roles have some sort of curse surrounding them. According to the lore, those who have taken these roles are doomed to misfortune, injury, or worse, and here we will look at some notable examples of these supposedly cursed roles. 

One of the most well-known such movie curses in pop culture orbits the DC Comics character of Superman, insidious and seemingly insatiable. It is a curse that sucks in and entangles anyone who has anything to do with Superman, and which has come to be known as the "Superman Curse." The supposed “Superman Curse” can be traced back to the character’s inception and creation by comic book artists Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. It has sometimes been noted that they are perhaps the first to suffer the wrath of the curse, as their character only started getting popular and making real money after they had sold the rights to the precursor company to DC Comics for a paltry 130 dollars. Siegel and Shuster would go on to try to claim some legal rights to ownership and royalties but were unable ever to get anywhere with it. In the end, they would barely ever see a dime from their iconic creation, and Siegel would at one point lament, “I can't stand to look at a Superman comic book. It makes me physically ill. I love Superman, yet he has become an alien thing to me.” In later years they would both fall on hard financial times, with Shuster also suffering from myriad medical problems, including waning eyesight that prevented him from drawing and making a living, and although they were finally granted a byline in Superman materials they were paid a pittance and lived in near poverty their entire lives. It leaves one asking whether this was part of a curse or just bad luck and a poor business decision, but if there is a curse it can probably be traced back here to the beginning.

Whether this particular “curse” started with Siegel and Shuster or not, it certainly didn’t end with them. In many of the cases, those supposedly affected were actors associated in some way to the series on television, animation, and film. In the 1940s Superman made his first appearance on television in the form of a series of two low-budget black and white serials starring actor Kirk Alyn as the Man of Steel. Far from a career boom for him, the role conversely destroyed it. When the series ended Alyn found himself nearly jobless, unable to snag any roles other than bit parts and commercial voiceovers, simply because he was so associated with Superman and irredeemably typecast, and no one really even knew his name because as an unknown actor, his name hadn’t even been in the credits on the serials he had appeared in. In later years his mind would wither away due to the onslaught of Alzheimer’s disease, and he would die in 1999 in obscurity, never having landed another famous role and claiming later in his life that Superman had ruined his life.

The curse then supposedly reared its head again when the first Superman animated series aired from 1941–1943, with the character voiced by Bud Collyer. While nothing bad happened to him at the time, and indeed he went on to become rather successful as the host of the game show To Tell the Truth, things took a turn for the worse later in his life. In 1966 a new Superman animated series titled The New Adventures of Superman was launched and Collyer was asked to reprise his iconic role, which he did to much fanfare. Just a few years after taking this gig, he would suddenly fall ill with a severe and unexpected circulatory ailment, which made quick work of him to kill him at the age of 61.

While this is all certainly spooky in a sense, it still wasn’t really considered a curse yet, and wouldn’t gain that particular distinction and launch itself into the public consciousness until actor George Reeves took up the red cape for the 1951 film Superman and the Mole Men, as well as for a Superman TV series that ran from 1952 to 1958. Although he had had a long film career before his role as the Man of Steel, his career would take a nose dive after his appearance in the film and series, as he was irredeemably typecast, similarly to Kirk Alyn. He would find fewer and fewer roles that did not have to do with Superman, and even when he did appear in films people could just not separate him from the iconic character he had played. He would spiral into a deep depression, and was the first to voice the idea that he had been literally cursed by the Superman role, and on June 16, 1959, just a day before his own wedding he was found dead in his home by apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound while his girlfriend and friends had a party downstairs. Although officially considered a suicide, considering Reeves’ fingerprints were not found on the gun it has long generated rumors and conspiracy theories that foul play was involved.

It was Reeves’ death and his ominous mention of curses in the days before that would truly bring the idea of a “Superman Curse” to life, and this was when the public began speculating that there might be something to it all. This would only be bolstered by the next high-profile victim of the “curse.” Perhaps the highest profile victim of the alleged curse is the man who most people probably see as the quintessential Superman to which all others are compared, actor Christopher Reeve. Appearing in Superman: The Movie (1978), Superman II (1980), Superman III (1983), and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), Reeve would truly embody the popular superhero to the point that his image was inextricably linked to Superman, and this might be why he would draw the most attention to the malicious curse.

There was of course the typical typecasting involved when it comes to Reeve, and indeed he found little memorable work outside of the role that had made him famous. He was mostly relegated to bit roles or those that had something to do with Superman, but he managed to keep his career afloat and this would be the least of his worries as the curse began its dark work. On the side, Reeve was an avid horseback riding enthusiast, often participating in equestrian events, but on May 27, 1995, one of these events would go tragically wrong when the actor was thrown from his horse to break his neck and leave him paralyzed from the neck down. Oddly, the grievous injury was blamed on witness accounts that his hands had rather freakishly gotten hopelessly tangled in the reigns, forcing his head to take the brunt of the impact. Reeve would never walk again, and he became a major advocate of treatment and support for those suffering paralysis, yet his life was tragically cut short at the age of 52 when he died on October 10, 2004, from heart and lung complications related to an adverse reaction to medication he was taking for his condition. Rather eerily, his wife Dana Reeve would develop lung cancer shortly after this and die 2 years later at the age of 44.

Rather ominously, it seems that the supposed curse seemed to have targeted the 1978 Superman movie, as Reeve was not the only alleged victim of the doomed production by a long shot, with various actors appearing in the movie experiencing death and misfortune during and after production. Margot Kidder, who played Superman's love interest Lois Lane, famously had all manner of woes in her life following Superman. Her career would take a deep plummet, her bipolar disorder became worse, and a car accident in 1990 left her partially paralyzed and unable to find work. She turned to drugs and alcohol, and in 1996 had a major mental meltdown, vanishing for several days only to turn up in a delusional state, chopping her hair off and ranting about how her husband was out to kill her. Kidder’s life would further unravel and spin out of control until her death on May 13, 2018, of an alcohol and drug overdose.

Also in the 1978 film and possibly cursed was famed actor Marlon Brando, who played Superman’s father Jor-El. After the film, Brando’s life went through some tumultuous periods. His son shot his half-sister’s boyfriend and was sent to prison in 1990, his daughter committed suicide in 1995, and Brando himself became a notorious unruly recluse considered nearly impossible to work with. The once unstoppable actor saw his star fade right up until he died in 2004, eerily just 3 months before Christopher Reeve would die. Even the actor who played baby Superman in the 1978 film is said to have suffered from the curse when actor Lee Quigley, who appeared as the baby, died in 1991 at the age of 14 after overdosing on inhaling harmful gas aerosols he had done to take the edge off the bullying he had received for his sole film role. The curse would spread out to the sequels of 1978’s Superman as well. Comedian Richard Pryor appeared in Superman III in 1983 and went on to develop serious drug abuse problems, get multiple sclerosis, and died on December 10, 2005, at the age of 65.

Although the most famous series of Superman films has incurred the most of the curse’s wrath, it is certainly not the end of such dark rumors. Production on the DVD for Bryan Singer’s 2006 film Superman Returns was supposedly plagued by all manner of freak accidents, mishaps, and bad luck, including on-set injuries and even a mugging, and Kate Bosworth, who played Lois Lane in the film, famously blamed the Superman Curse on her romantic split with actor Orlando Bloom and other personal woes. In later years there was also the TV show Smallville, which featured actress Allison Mack, who played Chloe Sullivan and who was arrested in 2018 for sex trafficking and forced human labor. There have certainly been cast members who don’t believe in any “Superman Curse” at all, with even one of the alleged victims Margot Kidder long denouncing the idea that there was such a curse behind her strife. Actor Henry Clavill, who has most recently portrayed Superman in Man of Steel (2013), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), and Justice League (2017), has said of the infamous curse:

Well, I mean, I honestly don’t believe there’s a curse. I think there’s been some bad luck in the past, especially when it comes to horses, and I don’t mean that as a joke. My fiancée is an international show jumper and I know all the risk attached to that. You can fall off 1,000 times and be fired through fences and then the one time you’re home out in the yard, all it takes is something to startle the horse and you’re off and you fall the wrong way. There’s bad luck, but I don’t think it’s any curse.

Of course, there is likely a rational explanation for this all. After all, one can tie any unfortunate incident to a production and then go looking for other incidents to add to the fire if one were so inclined. Yet the Superman Curse remains special because it has become so well-known and embroiled with ominous happenings. Whether it is just our minds grasping at straws or something truly supernatural in nature, it certainly puts a different spin on any viewing of a Superman movie.

Another comic book role that is frequently rumored to be cursed at least to some degree is The Joker, of DC Comics lore. Jack Nicholson, who perhaps most famously played The Joker in Tim Burton’s 1989 iteration of the film, claimed that he felt uncomfortable playing the role and that it had “a life of its own,” but the curse really comes into stride with the more recent Batman films, directed by Christopher Nolan, which too have plenty of darkness pervading them. Most notable was the death of the actor Heath Ledger, who made an impressive, career-making turn as The Joker in The Dark Knight, of an apparent drug overdose during filming, which was a death that rocked the entertainment industry and shocked the world. Ledger had found himself having profound personal and mental issues in the role, claiming to have been unable to sleep and becoming ravenously consumed by the part and thoroughly exhausted by it, spiraling down a road to depression that cost him his relationship with girlfriend Michelle Williams. According to some reports, Jack Nicholson, who had played the previous iteration of the role of The Joker, purportedly even warned Ledger to be careful when approaching the part, as it had a life of its own and the potential to be dangerous, creepily saying after Ledger’s death about the role, “Well, I warned him.” Ledger’s last known words were “Bye Bye” scrawled into a notebook next to a picture of himself in full creepy Joker makeup.

Interestingly, Ledger’s was not the only death or injury to haunt the production, as a special effects technician named Conway Wickliffe was killed during a stunt for a scene involving a chase with a truck, and later a stunt double would be injured under similar circumstances, and Morgan Freeman would also be involved in a serious car accident in 2008, after which Freeman and his wife would divorce not long after. By far the spookiest and most terrifying incident related to the “Batman Curse” happened in 2012, when a 24-year-old PhD student at the University of Colorado-Denver, James Holmes, attended a screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado, and then proceeded to set off a tear gas canister before indiscriminately opening fire upon the crowd of theatergoers. When the smoke cleared, 12 were dead and a further 70 were injured. The Nolan Batman movies have been critically and commercially well-received, but certainly have their demons stalking about in the shadows.

Even more recently, Jared Leto, who played the Joker in The Suicide Squad, also went through a good deal of mental and emotional turmoil while playing the part. He would claim that he spent most of the time on set in character even when he wasn’t filming and that he would spend the majority of his time alone in his dressing room shunning the presence of cast and crew. During filming, Leto did a number of demented things, such as sending a rat to his co-star, Margot Robbie, and a dead pig to the rest of the cast. He would later claim that he wasn’t sure why he had done these things, and had felt that the role was in a sense possessing him. There was also Joaquin Phoenix, who played the role in Joker and claimed to have gone slightly mad from the role and the weight loss it involved, and that the role "scares the f**king s**t" out of him.” So is the role of the Joker really cursed or is this all just bad luck, coincidence, and the effects of a challenging, dark role? 

Moving on from comic book movies we have the role of none other than Jesus Christ. It seems like a role that any actor would want to try their hand at, but many have learned to regret their decision to take it on. The most famous example of the “Jesus curse” revolves around the very successful and very controversial 2004 movie The Passion of the Christ, directed by Mel Gibson, which tells the tale of the betrayal of Jesus Christ and his subsequent torture and death. Indeed the entire production seems to have been targeted by some sort of curse. In this case, the crew just couldn’t seem to avoid all of the freak lightning strikes going on during filming. Assistant director Jan Michelini was struck by lightning not once, but twice during the shoot, and the lead actor who played Jesus, Jim Caviezel was also struck by lightning on location, with some crew saying that at the time he had literally had smoke coming out of his ears.

Caviezel was particularly targeted by this supposed curse, suffering hardship after hardship while filming. Despite suffering from a bout of hypothermia, as well as pneumonia and a lung infection, on top of the lightning strike, he also was struck by a dislocated shoulder during one scene carrying the heavy cross and seriously injured during the main event, the scene where Jesus is being led out to the cross and relentlessly flogged. Although the scene and its violence were ostensibly fake, Caviezel had chunks of flesh ripped out, and he suffered various skin infections to boot, mostly stemming from the copious makeup needed to make the fake injuries look so real. He also injured his back, and in one scene an actor hit him in his hurt back, causing him to writhe and double over in agony, in turn causing him to cut his hands on the metal rings to which he was attached. In the end, the production thoroughly spent Caviezel, and the actor required heart surgery and psychiatric treatment after the movie was complete. 
  
To add insult to injury, both Mel Gibson and Jim Caviezel have suffered from major career blows since making the film, and this seems to be another issue with playing the role of Jesus Christ, as many actors who’ve portrayed Jesus have then disappeared from the limelight shortly after. There was Ted Neeley, who suffered the death of his movie career after playing the lead in the film version of Jesus Christ Superstar, John Bassberger, who would star in just one film after portraying Jesus, Robert Powell, who severely regretted having ever taken on the role, and Chris Sarandon. Jeffery Hunter, who played the role in King of Kings in the 1950s, did fine during the production, with critics praising the epic style of the film and saying that Hunter would be remembered as one of the greatest interpreters of Jesus Christ in the history of cinema, but in the following years, he suffered a series of misfortunes. Not only did his career drop off a cliff like the other actors mentioned here, but In 1969, while filming Viva América!, an accidental explosion on the set caused burns on his arms, and several broken glasses caused injuries on his face. Weeks later, while training judo with a friend he received a blow to the chin that sent him to the ground to hit his head on a door. On the flight back to the United States, he suffered paralysis of his right arm, lost his speech and was diagnosed with a stroke, which would cause him bouts of dizziness and headaches for the rest of his life. One day he was at home alone when he was overtaken by one of these dizziness spells while on the stairs. He lost his balance and fell to the ground with such bad luck that he fractured his skull. He was found hours later, unconscious, taken to hospital, and died during the operation on May 27, 1969.  Curse or just rotten luck? Who knows?

Another movie role that was so cursed it made sure the film never even got made was the deeply troubled story of the film Atuk, based on the 1963 novel The Incomparable Atuk, by Mordecai Richler. The comedic tale of an Inuit Eskimo who finds himself a stranger in the strange land of New York City and tries to awkwardly adjust was made into a screenplay by Tod Carroll in the early 1980s and quickly gained a reputation for having a deadly curse surrounding it like a dark cloud. By far the most infamous and ominous of these is the list of tragic deaths linked in some way to the making of Atuk reads like a veritable who’s who of comedy actors. Legendary comedian John Belushi was the first to take the title role, and indeed he was the very first choice, with screenwriter Carroll specifically saying that he had written the role for Belushi, but not long after the actor died of a drug overdose in 1982 at the young age of 33 years old. The next comedian actor to take the part was Sam Kinison, who managed to film one scene, but things went awry when the famous comic insisted that vast rewrites be done on the script, and he would soon leave the production altogether and be killed in a horrific head-on car crash in 1992 at 38 years old. The role of Atuk made its way to comedian John Candy, who not long after reading the script was struck down by a heart attack at the age of 43, with the screenplay reportedly still in his possession. Eerily, the comedy writer Michael O'Donoghue, who reportedly read the script with Candy, died of a sudden cerebral hemorrhage a few months later.

The Atuk role passed on to the famously overweight and zany Chris Farley, star of the popular American comedy TV program Saturday Night Live. Farley was purportedly quite eager to start filming, as Belushi had been one of his idols, but he would never get the chance as he would follow Belushi’s lead and die of a drug overdose at the age of 33 as well. Interestingly, Farley supposedly had handed the script to friend and fellow Saturday Night Live comedian Phil Hartman, who was interested in maybe taking a supporting role in the film, but who would be killed in a sudden, shocking crime when his wife shot him and then herself in a chilling murder-suicide. He was 49 years old. After Hartman’s death, the “cursed” script was shelved and the project has never been pursued again.

Often linked to the Atuk curse is that of another unfinished film based on John Kennedy Toole’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Confederacy of Dunces. Like Atuk, the proposed movie, which was originally going to be directed by Harold Ramis, had a grim reputation for having almost every single one of its lead actors die off, with many of them spookily the same person. John Belushi was set to star in it, as was John Candy and Chris Farley, all of whom as we have seen died tragically, and all of whom were attached to both doomed projects. Other actors linked to the film, such as Will Ferrell, Jack Black, and Zach Galifianakis seem to be doing alright though, at least so far. Other misfortune came in the form of Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed much of the city where the movie was to be filmed. Even one of the directors tied to the film over the years, Steven Soderbergh, believed the film was actually cursed. The Confederacy of Dunces has still not been close to being made and remains in hopeless limbo despite all efforts to make it.

Some movies seem to be so cursed that pretty much every role in them brings about death and misfortune. The movie Poltergeist is undeniably one of the classic horror movies of all time. Directed by Tobe Hooper and written and produced by none other than Steven Spielberg, it follows the struggles of a suburban family, the Freelings, dealing with a terrifying invasion by malevolent spirits and the kidnapping of their young daughter by these phantoms, who are in thrall to a mysterious, menacing demon referred to simply as “The Beast.” The film is notable for its unnerving atmosphere and ability to exploit childhood fears, such as the fear of creepy dolls, the thing under the bed, and the scary tree outside the window, bringing them to life with some truly iconic scenes that served to do a good job of traumatizing children of the era (myself included.) When it was released in 1982, the movie was a huge hit, going on to be spun into two sequels and a remake. The film is also remembered for having one of the most notorious movie curses looming over it.

Things were creepy on the Poltergeist set before filming even really began. The rumor is that the filmmakers decided that rather than craft fake, plastic skeletons as props in various scenes, which would have been expensive to make, they instead opted to use actual real human bones. The skeletons were most famously used in a harrowing scene in which actress JoBeth Williams’s character finds herself at the bottom of a half-filled swimming pool in a sludge of mud and human skeletons, which proceed to attack her as she tries desperately to crawl out of the watery grave. According to the actress, real human skeletons were used in this scene and the film crew did not inform her about it. In fact, it seems that producer Spielberg hadn’t really told anyone working on the film about it at the time. Williams would later say of the undeniably creepy situation:

In my innocence and naiveté, I assumed that these were not real skeletons. I assumed that they were prop skeletons made out of plastic or rubber . . . I found out, as did the crew, that they were using real skeletons, because it's far too expensive to make fake skeletons out of rubber.

Although these claims have never been proven, it has been suggested that the use of real human skeletons as props may have been the catalyst for what was to come next, as it would become apparent that a dark force potentially hung over not only the original film but indeed the whole series, leading to several bizarre deaths for those involved with filming and other oddities. The first death would occur just weeks after the release of the original film, when 22-year-old actress Dominique Dunne, who played the older sister, Dana Freeling, was brutally choked by her boyfriend on the night of 30 October 1982. Dunne had been locked in an abusive relationship with a chef by the name of John Sweeney and had actually kicked him out of their shared Los Angeles residence. On the night of the incident, Sweeney had allegedly stopped by to try to work things out, but the conversation had instead devolved into a huge argument in the driveway, ending with Sweeney savagely choking Dunne into unconsciousness and leaving her for dead right where she fell. Dunne would be rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where she would remain unconscious for four more days before dying without ever waking up again. Sweeney was subsequently found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 6 years of prison, of which he would only serve 3 and a half. In another more recent development, actor Lou Perryman, who played a small role in the film, was savagely murdered in his own home by an axe-wielding escaped convict in 2009.

There were other less tragic but nevertheless bizarre oddities orbiting the production of Poltergeist as well. In one incident, actor Richard Lawson, who plays paranormal investigator Ryan in the film, was flying aboard USAir Flight 405 in March of 1992 when the plane crashed into Flushing Bay, New York. Although Lawson survived the crash, 27 of the 51 people on board were killed in the disaster. Another strange series of events plagued actress JoBeth Williams during filming, when she claimed that the pictures hanging up in her home were always crooked when she returned home from filming.

The deaths and weirdness would continue with the film’s sequel, Poltergeist II: The Other Side, released in 1986, which would bring with it two more rather famous deaths and several other ominous signs. The first major death was that of actor Julian Beck, who portrays the evil ghostly preacher Rev. Henry Kane in the film. Beck, who was diagnosed with stomach cancer before filming began, would succumb to his illness in September of 1985, shortly before the film was released in theaters. In 1987, another cast member would die when Will Sampson, 53, who played a Native American shaman in the movie and is perhaps best known as an actor for his role as the mute Native American in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, passed away from complications related to a risky heart-lung transplant he had received 6 weeks earlier. Interestingly, during the filming of Poltergeist II, Sampson performed an actual exorcism on the set due to his increasing concerns about the alleged use of real skeletons as props in the first film. Other deaths somewhat related to the production of Poltergeist II are also sometimes attributed to the alleged curse. Zelda Rubenstein, who plays a psychic in the movie, was called to be informed that her mother had passed away during filming, and the director himself, Brian Gibson, died of Ewing's sarcoma in 2004.

By far the most talked about and well-known death linked to the Poltergeist series is that of young Heather O'Rourke, who portrayed the Freeling family’s youngest daughter, Carol Anne, in all three of the Poltergeist films and was inextricably linked to the series for her central, iconic role. Appearing in the first movie when she was only 6 years old, O'Rourke would be misdiagnosed with Crohn’s Disease in 1987 after falling ill. When she still became sick the following year even with treatment for the disease, doctors told her she merely had the flu, but this was not to be the case. When O’Rourke collapsed the very next day, she was rushed to a children’s hospital in San Diego where it was determined that she had an obstructed bowel. On 1 February 1988, just before the release of Poltergeist III, she tragically died at the age of 12 during an emergency operation, and it was determined that she had actually been suffering from a congenital intestinal abnormality that had gone undiagnosed. The sudden death of this charming little girl, who was the face of the series and had up until then been so vibrant and healthy, shocked and saddened the public at the time. Adding a layer of bizarreness to this untimely death is an odd portent from the first film. In one scene, a poster can be seen on the wall of Carol Anne’s brother in the movie (Robbie, played by Oliver Robins), which reads "Superbowl XXII." The actual Superbowl XXII would be played 6 years later in 1988, just one day before O’Rourke’s tragic death, and in the very same city.

The strange events, as well as the deaths of these cast members and crew, especially the fact that they were sometimes totally unexpected, have long given rise to the notion that the production of the Poltergeist movies was cursed. Indeed, at one point the urban legends and rumors surrounding this “curse” got so bad that some permutations claimed that one of the child actors died after filming each movie, as well as the preposterous rumor that EVERYONE who appeared in the movies has since died, both of which are untrue. Although the Poltergeist curse has over the years become infamous, is there anything to it, or is this all just coincidence or reaching for patterns that aren’t really there? Finally, we come to a curse hanging over not any one role in particular, but rather over many roles that have won their actors Oscars. For years there seems to be a mysterious jinx that imbues the honor of winning an Academy award, and while it’s logical to think that winning Hollywood’s most prestigious award should catapult its winner into the A-list, the sad fact of the matter is that many Oscar-winning performers have seen their career trajectories plummet into the ground as soon as they finish their acceptance speeches. 

The list of actors who have been plagued by the so-called “Oscar Curse” is long. Halle Berry won an Oscar in 2001’s Monster’s Ball, a critically acclaimed drama starring Billy Bob Thornton and Heath Ledger, for which she was nominated for Best Actress for her performance, and in 2002, she became the first African-American to win the award. However, although starring in some somewhat successful movies in the years that followed, her career then took a nosedive, with her appearing in box office bomb after bomb, such as Gothic and Catwoman, which was considered to be so bad that it won her the award for worst actress at the anti-Oscar ceremony known as the Raspberry Awards. Similarly, Mira Sorvino won an Oscar for her role in the 1995 Woody Allen film Mighty Aphrodite, after which her career tanked and she was doomed to star mostly in poorly received rom-coms. In the 1996 film Jerry Maguire, Cuba Gooding Jr. won an Oscar for the role of a football player named Rod Tidwell, after which he starred in a string of flops and had legal troubles due to sexually inappropriate misconduct. 


It doesn’t stop there. Marisa Tomei won an Oscar for her role in My Cousin Vinny as Mona Lisa Vito, after which her career veered off into duds, with her only slightly making a comeback in 2008 with a nomination for her role in The Wrestler. In 1991 actress Mercedes Ruehl won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress but failed to follow it up with anything noteworthy, and she mostly vanished into obscurity. Marcia Gay Harden would win an Oscar for her role in Pollock, an edgy biographical drama about the hard-drinking abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock, but after this, her career would never really take off and she would later lament that winning the Oscar was one of the worst things to happen to her. The list goes on and on, with Roberto Benigni, F. Murray Abraham, Adrien Brody, Linda Hunt, Marlee Matlin, Olympia Dukakis, and Geena Davis some of the other many actors who have won a coveted Oscar and either faced misfortune or had their careers drop off the face of the earth. Is there anything to the “Oscar Curse”? Is there anything to any of these supposed curses? For Dr Stuart Wilson, a senior ­lecturer in psychology, sociology and education at Edinburgh’s Queen Margaret University, this is all basically us finding negative patterns, and he has said of it:

A lot of human cognition is pattern detection, and we are particularly good at noticing clusters. So a cluster of negative events, even ones associated with a movie, can be particularly salient – and that’s when culture takes over and labels like ‘cursed’ start getting attached.” Negativity bias – our habit of being more swayed by the bad things we perceive than the neutral and good – also comes into play. These systems are screaming at us that there’s something worth paying attention to here.

It is hard to say whether all of this is attributable to any sort of supernatural curse. Movie productions employ so many people and there are bound to be deaths, misfortune, and accidents orbiting them from time to time, and with so many involved there is no greater rate of mishaps than there really would be with a random sampling of people. Add in talk of a curse and suddenly anything bad that happens can be blamed on it, so perhaps this is just reading into things a little too much and weaving an urban legend around nothing more than bad luck. Or is it perhaps something more? I leave it for you to decide.