Cliff Robertson didn’t have a huge film career after “Charly”.
Heat, Donnie Brasco, Insomnia, the Insider and arguably, the Devil’s Advocate.
She won it at 80 years of age and died within 5 years having secured a nomination for best supporting actress for the above mentioned film. I’m not sure how many weighty lead roles for octogenarian women there are floating around Hollywood, but I think Jessica Tandy did the best she could in the time she had.
Hey, what ever happened to that Heath Ledger fellow? Talk about resting on your laurels after winning the statue.
I know it goes against what the OP asked for by naming a supporting actor but there is Harold Russell from “Best years of Our Lives”. But then he was told there were not many roles for an actor with no hands.
Just talking about this the other day, and the two names that immediately came to mind were:
Adrien Brody
Halle Berry
Neither have done much. I though Brody was ok in Hollywoodland, but that’s it. I saw him recently doing commercials for a razor or something.
Berry, let’s face it, isn’t much of an actress. She’s eye candy. I didn’t expect much from her, but I didn’t expect her to fall off the map.
I’ll through one more man and woman that don’t immediately come to mind.
Sissy Spacek
Kevin Spacey
Estelle Parsons won for Bonnie & Clyde yet is probably far better known for her appearances on Roseanne. Between her Oscar win and that movie she did lots of episodic television guest appearances, which is kind of a comedown from the highest profile acting honor in the U.S…
Mercedes Ruehl certainly isn’t that successful in movies or TV. Probably her highest profile thing since Fisher King was a recurring role on Frasier that didn’t last long and wasn’t that popular.
Fredric March can be added, he won for “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” in 1932 and won again in 1946 for “Best Years of our Lives”. His most remembered role today is probably 1960s “Inherit the Wind”.
Halle Berry hasn’t fallen off the map. She’s been in six Hollywood movies post-Catwoman (seven if you count Robots) and has three more coming out in the next year and a half, including Cloud Atlas with Tom Hanks. The problem I guess, is that the biggest two films she was in the last five years, New Years Eve and Perfect Stranger, both tanked at the Box Office. Bruce Willis couldn’t even save Perfect Stranger
I don’t think he did win Best Actor, anyway. I think he won Best Supporting Actor.
Shouldn’t there be some rules laid down for this thread? For example, I think any Best Actor or Best Actress winner who managed to get nominated and/or star in at least one hugely successful movie afterward should be automatically disqualified. Also, it isn’t fair to take actors and actresses who were past Social Security age when they won into serious consideration.
To be fair, she has had a lot on her mind recently.
Looking through the list of Best Actor winners, I’m almost tempted to pick Laurence Olivier. He won in 1948, and his career after that - although there several gems, and he never went poor - felt like a long, slow decline as he fell out of fashion. Started out as a titan of the acting profession, ended up as a relic of a bygone age. He was never sufficiently Hollywood to become a treasured old character veteran like Kurt Russell or Burt Lancaster, and in Britain he turned into a kind of comical figure who appeared in rubbish films for the money and insisted on being called “Larry”. Problem being that his stage performances were never properly filmed, and so people had nothing to look back on. But unlike Alec Guinness - who had a similar career arc - he had been hyped as the golden child of the acting profession when he was young. Perhaps he could have moved into direction, like Richard Attenborough, or Kenneth Branagh. Did Branagh do a good job with Thor? Does Hollywood rate him as a director? Or was he just a novelty choice?
In fact Guinness won an Oscar, too, I’d almost forgotten that. Wikipedia’s section on Alec Guiness’ film career llooks like this:
FILM CAREER
- David Lean
- Star Wars
In the future old people will remember him as the man who was originally in Star Wars before being digitally replaced by a CGI model of Ewan McGregor.
Looking over Wikipedia’s list of Best Actor Academy Award winners is an eye-opener. Who the hell was Cliff Robertson? What on Earth was Harry and Tonto (for which Art Carney beat Albert Finney, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson, and Al Pacino to win the 1974 Best Actor Oscar)? There’s a wodge of 80s Oscar bait films that I can barely remember - Ironweed, Children of a Lesser God, Reuben, Rueben. Why did Prizzi’s Honor get seven nominations? Oh God, I remember when Jeremy Irons was the great white hope of British acting. With his dashing good looks and fearless performances. “Let their blood RAIN!!! from the sky!!!”, indeed.
Cliff Robertson was big, so big he toppled Dave Begelman’s empire at Columbia Pictures. 
He also played Peter Parker’s uncle in the latest Spider Man movies.
I think the thing is that a lot of Oscar winners “cash in” on their win. They win the award for a prestigious role. But the prestige of winning gets them offers for commercial roles, which many of them accept. And then those commercials roles diminish their prestige.
Look at the OP’s examples, Adrien Brody and Halle Berry. Brody won for The Pianist - and he followed it up with a M. Night Shyamalan thriller, The Village. Berry won for Monster’s Ball - and she followed it up with a James Bond movie, Die Another Day. The problem is that it doesn’t take too many movies like Catwoman or King Kong to wipe out the prestige of an Oscar win. These people should have thought a little more long-term and worked on cementing their reputation as a serious actor rather than using it up.
Look at Meryl Streep as a counter-example. She won her first Oscar for Kramer vs Kramer. But she didn’t immediately turn around and do some crowd-pleasing thriller or romantic comedy. Her follow-up role was The French Lieutenant’s Woman. (Okay, she followed that up with a forgettable thriller called Still of the Night. But she got back on track after that with Sophie’s Choice and Silkwood.)
She certainly hasn’t disappeared, but Faye Dunaway has never been as good or as successful since winning her Oscar for Network.
George Chakiris fell off of the face of the Earth after West Side Story.
Joel Grey went back to the stage after Cabaret.
Timothy Hutton.
Hattie McDaniel (supporting). In all fairness, how many roles were available for her back then?
“Mister Kane, ah done finished the moppin’. Oh, an’ I cleaned up that ol’ sled o’ yours-- ah gots ta scrubbin’ an’ ah managed to polish that scribblin’ right offen it!”
The thread got me to wondering about ways to quantify and so I played with some some and what follows isn’t particularly meaningful but why the hell not.
I took all fo the Best Actor winners (will do Actresses next if I don’t get bored) between 1960 (dying studio system) and 2002 (far enough back that the winner has had time for a post-win career to take shape.
Then looked at how many more movies they made, what the average IMDb rating of those movies is (biased data on top of meaninglessly selected data) and how many particualrly good movies (rated above 7 at IMDB or particularly bad (below 5) they had.
Here’s how they shake out.
**Post Win Career As Defined by Continued Academy Recognition (Any Acting Category)
**
Jack Nicholson (Post Terms of Endearment) - 2 future wins, 7 future nominations
Dustin Hofman (Kramer vs. Kramer) - 1 future win, 3 future nominations
Daniel Day-Lewis (My Left Foot) - 1 future win, 3 future nominations
Tom Hanks (Philadelphia) - 1 futurre win, 3 future nominations
Gene Hackman (The French Connection) - 1 future win, 2 future nominations
Future Nominations Only
Ben Kinglsey - 3
William Hurt - 3
Anthony Hopkins - 3
Tom Hanks - 2
Geoffrey Rush - 2
Burt Lancaster - 2
Maximillian Schell - 2
Marlon Brando - 2
Jon Voight - 2
Robert De Niro - 2
Robert Duvall - 2
Paul Newman - 2
Paul Scofield - 1
George C. Scott - 1
Richard Dreyfuss - 1
Dustin Hoffman (Rain Man) - 1
Nicolas Cage - 1
Jack Nicholson (As Good as It Gets) - 1
No future nominations after win: Gregory Peck, Sidney Poitier, Rex Harrison, Lee Marvin, Rod Steiger, Cliff Robertson, John Wayne, Art Carney, Peter Finch, Henry Fonda, F. Murray Abraham, Michael Douglas, Jeremy Irons, Al Pacino, Roberto Benigni, Kevin Spacey, Denzel Washington, Adrien Brody.
**Post Win Career As Defined by Number of Movies Made After Win (Bold = Dead)
**
Gene Hackman - 65
Robert De Niro - 64
**Rod Steiger - 59
**Ben Kinglsey - 54
William Hurt - 54
Robert Duvall - 46
Anthony Hopkins - 45
Maximillian Schell - 45
Richard Dreyfuss - 41
**Burt Lancaster - 40
**F. Murray Abraham - 40
Nicolas Cage - 38
Jack Nicholson (Cuckoo’s Nest) - 36
**Cliff Robertson - 36
**Dustin Hoffman (Kramer vs. Kramer) - 35
Jon Voight - 35
Geoffrey Rush - 34
Dustin Hoffman (Rain Man) - 30
Jeremy Irons - 30
Tom Hanks (Philadelphia) - 28
Michael Douglas - 27
**Jack Lemmon - 27
**Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump) - 26
Kevin Spacey - 25
Sidney Poitier - 24
**George C. Scott - 23
Gregory Peck - 22
Lee Marvin - 22
**Al Pacino - 21
**Art Carney - 19
**Adrien Brody - 19
**Marlon Brando - 13
**Denzel Washington - 13
**Paul Scofield - 12
**Russell Crowe - 12
**Paul Newman - 11
Rex Harrison - 11
John Wayne - 11
**Daniel Day-Lewis - 10
Jack Nicholson (As Good as It Gets) - 7
Roberto Benigni - 5
**Peter Finch - 0
Peter Fonda - 0
**
**Post Win Career As Defined by Average IMDb Rating for Post-Win Movies
**
Tom Hanks (Philadelphia) - 7.19
Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump) - 7.151
Russell Crowe - 7.143
Denzel Washington - 7.046
Daniel Day-Lewis - 6.871
Jack Nicholson (As Good as It Gets) - 6.871
Burt Lancaster - 6.824
Geoffrey Rush - 6.765
Paul Scofield - 6.722
Paul Newman - 6.646
Jack Nicholson (Cuckoo’s Nest) - 6.644
Kevin Spacey - 6.635
Robert De Niro - 6.582
Al Pacino - 6.578
Gregory Peck - 6.569
Sidney Poitier - 6.548
John Wayne - 6.545
Lee Marvin - 6.539
Jack Lemmon - 6.537
Dustin Hoffman (Rain Man) - 6.532
Dustin Hoffman (Kramer vs. Kramer) - 6.526
Adrien Brody - 6.512
Jeremy Irons - 6.448
Anthony Hopkins - 6.399
Michael Douglas - 6.386
Gene Hackman - 6.377
William Hurt - 6.364
Robert Duvall - 6.338
Maximillian Schell - 6.262
Marlon Brando - 6.262
Ben Kingsley - 6.249
George C. Scott - 6.215
Nicolas Cage - 6.209
Richard Dreyfuss - 6.205
Rex Harrison - 6.004
Jon Voight - 5.964
Cliff Robertson - 5.592
Art Carney - 5.891
Roberto Benigni - 5.886
F. Murray Abraham - 5.793
Rod Steiger - 4.929
Henry Fonda - N/A
Peter Finch - N/A
Top 10 Post-Win Careers Based on % of Future Films Rated > 7
- Russell Crowe - 66.67%
- Daniel Day-Lewis - 60.00%
- Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump) - 57.69%
- Tom Hanks (Philadelphia) - 57.14%
- Denzel Washington - 46.15%
- Al Pacino - 42.86%
- Geoffrey Rush - 41.18%
- Burt Lancaster - 37.50%
- Paul Newman - 36.36%
- Lee Marvin - 36.36%
Bottom 10 Post-Win Careers Based on % of Future Films Rated < 5
- Art Carney - 26.32%
- Marlon Brando - 23.08%
- Roberto Benigni - 20.00%
- Jon Voight - 17.14%
- Ben Kinglsey - 16.67%
- F. Murray Abraham - 15.00%
- Cliff Robertson - 13.89%
- Rod Steiger - 10.17%
- Maximillian Schell - 8.89%
- Richard Dreyfuss - 7.32%
In Ronald Coleman’s defense, he died in 58 of acute emphysema - he probably wasn’t really able to do much in the last couple years before he actually died.