Pregnant Natalie Portman took home a best actress statuette at the SAG Awards and later snagged an Oscar. Photo credit: Image.net

Natalie Portman is doing bad things with her Oscar – like starring in medieval stoner schlock Your Highness and some movie with Ashton Kutcher. According to Grantland, described by New York Magazine’s Culture Vulture blog as “the ESPN-funded Bill Simmons site full of meaty essays on sports and pop culture”, Portman and 10 other Oscar-winners have “tarnished” their awards by starring in crap movies.

“Winning an Oscar is the ultimate validation of an actor’s work — but it won’t pay for private school! So when the bills come due, lately it seems like even the most serious thespians will step over Terrence Malick to get to the nearest green screen (and easy paycheck) to deliver crappy dialogue into a 3-D camera,” explained Grantland’s Lane Brown. “2011′s bumper crop of sequels, remakes, and general schlock has built swimming pools in the backyards of some of our most revered actors. But at what cost to their dramatic cred?”

Using the newly devised “cuba” measurement, a reference to Oscar-winner Cuba Gooding Jr. who went from Jerry Maguire and As Good As It Gets to Snow Dogs and Daddy Day Camp in one Icarus-like dive, Brown ranked those performers who have taken the most shine off their trophies; to narrow that down, he only looked at those who currently have films in theatres. (For those interested in how he arrived at a particular actor’s “cuba” number, he says he “calculated the average Rotten Tomatoes score of all of their post-Oscar movies — since and including the one that won them their award — through the end of 2010, and then the average of their post-Oscar movies through this past weekend”).

Check out the full list here

Portman, who won her little golden guy for her turned as a cracked-out ballerina in Black Swan, took the top spot, earning herself a whopping 28 cubas with films like Thor. “In her defense, new Oscars are always the most easily tarnished — but she might as well have dropped hers in a deep-fryer… It seems obvious she was trying to bank paychecks before her pregnancy. Now that she can presumably afford to send triplets to college on the moon, though, let’s hope she’ll be choosier.”

Others on the list? Christopher Walz, who took home a Best Supporting Actor for his role in Inglorious Basterds, promptly starred in The Green Hornet and Water For Elephants. Rotten Tomatoes and Brown do not approve; he got 24 cubas. Helen Mirren (won for The Queen, loses with Arthur), Jennifer Connelly (won with A Beautiful Mind, definitely loses with The Dilemma) and Tom Hanks (two nods, for Forrest Gump and Philadelphia, but Larry Crowne is tanking) also appear on the list.

Anybody else you think deserves mention? Any actors not in films in theatres right now you think should hand back their Oscars?

 

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