4. Mercedes Ruehl
You might not be familiar with Mercedes Ruehl, but she shot to fame when she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for
The Fisher King, which also starred Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges. That was back in 1991. It's safe to say that Ruehl never really found a way to use that Oscar win to her advantage, given that she pretty much disappeared afterwards. She took on a few supporting roles, yes, none of which brought her much acclaim - if you happened to mention her name to passerbys on the street, they just stare blankly at you. So what happened? Why didn't that win launch her career into the stratosphere? Well, a couple of badly picked roles in the aftermath of her Oscar probably did the actress no favours:
Lost In Yonkers was bad, and
Last Action Hero was even worse. Then it was onto a couple of made-for-TV flicks, and goodbye Mercedes Ruehl, I guess. Nowadays, they say you can still glimpse a ghostly figure believed to be Ruehl haunting the hallways of the Dorothy Chandler Theatre in Los Angeles, where she picked up her Oscar on that ill-fated night. Spooky.