14. Ellen Burstyn Owned Requiem For A Dream And Shed Own Erin Brockovich Too
Julia Roberts is a great actress. She gets lots of lead billings because of her talent. Talent doesnt make you the best though, not in any given year anyways. What makes you great in any given year is how you perform in a specific role. Julia Roberts as Erin Brokovich was (to use a basketball analogy) a regular season performance for top five career player. Ellen Burstyns was Robert Horry in the playoffs. Her monologue in Requiem for a Dream is daring and vulnerable and indicative of her entire performance. I'm not saying I'd pick Burstyn over Roberts on any given day, but you have to respect the game she played that day and give her the recognition she deserved. In 2001 you put Julia Roberts in the Hall of Fame; you give the champagne celebration to Ellen Burstyn.
13.The Oscar Curse
If you're an actor up for a big gong at the Oscars, there must be a tiny part of the back of your mind screaming that victory might mean never working again, or at least making the kind of monumentally stupid decisions that Cuba Gooding Jnr and Halle Berry both made in the wake of their big wins. And those two aren't the only ones - there's a long and colourful history of actors supposedly suffering the Oscar curse, and it doesn't look like it's going to end any time soon.
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