10 Actors Who Made A Terrible Movie Right After Winning An Oscar

By Sam Hill / March 10, 2016

Winning an Oscar isn't some magical guarantee of a great career. Even if the Academy decide to one day present you with an award, there's still a chance that you'll make a bunch of ill-judged choices and end up in a succession of terrible, critically-panned pictures. Still, usually an Oscar means that - for a few years, at least - an actor will be able to find their way into some of the best projects in Hollywood. They're given a special window of time in which the biggest producers and directors in the business seek out recent Academy Award winners to star in the next "big" films. Which means that it's almost always shocking to find out that an Oscar winner produced something godawful right after they won an Academy Award. As in: their very next movie. These guys were on top of the world with Hollywood in the palm of their hands, and then - somehow - they wound up releasing some seriously lackluster post-Oscar films.

10. Christoph Waltz - The Green Hornet (2011)

Won An Oscar For: Inglourious Basterds (2009) Christoph Waltz shot to global fame when he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in Quentin Tarantino's World War II epic, Inglourious Basterds. Nazi Colonel Hans Landa was without question the best thing in the film. Funny to think that he was a mere television actor before Tarantino cast him in the role, huh? The world his oyster, then, Waltz took a year off before coming back with his next film: an adaptation of The Green Hornet TV show, famous for the fact that it starred Bruce Lee. This version, however, starred Seth Rogen, and it proved to be a misfire on every level. Despite being directed by acclaimed filmmaker Michel Gondry (who helmed Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind), The Green Hornet emerged as an awkward parody that failed to justify its own existence. As the villain, Waltz was fine, but there was little of the magic that made his character in Inglourious Basterds so memorable.