Is there an Oscar winner curse that causes divorce?

The 83rd Academy Awards are just a few short weeks away and many Oscar hopefuls are waiting with great anticipation to learn if they will forever be known as an “Academy Award winner” or simply as a “nominee.” However, some believe winning an Oscar may bring bad news for the winner.

There has been a fair amount of anecdotal evidence of an Oscar winner curse, especially for winners of the Best Actress award. Aside from winning the Academy Award for Best Actress, what do Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Halle Berry, Hilary Swank, Sandra Bullock and Kate Winslet have in common? Their marriages all ended in divorce shortly after the won the award.

A recent study by the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and Carnegie Mellon University studied this phenomenon and statistically confirmed the anecdotal evidence. They found that Best Actress winners had a 63 percent chance of their marriages ending sooner than Best Actress nominees who did not win.

The study looked at the 751 nominees in the Best Actress and Best Actor categories between 1936 and 2010. They found the median marriage of a Best Actress winner lasted only 4.30 years after winning the Oscar. This figure was significantly lower than the 9.51-year marriage duration for nominees who did not win. In contrast, there was no significant difference for Best Actor winners at 11.97 years and Best Actor nominees at 12.66 years.

While the likelihood of there being an Oscar winner curse is very low, the researchers did reach an interesting conclusion. They believe the divorce rate for Best Actress winners is caused by sudden success taking a toll on the longevity of marriage.

Source: Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, “The Oscar Curse? Study Says that Oscar Win for Best Actress Increases the Risk of Divorce,” 1/28/2011