Oscar can kill a career - actress

Winning an Oscar for best supporting actress can kill a career, according to Marcia Gay Harnden, who won the award for 2000’s Pollock.

“The Oscar is disastrous on a professional level,” she tells Premiere magazine. “Suddenly the parts you’re offered become smaller and the money less. There’s no logic to it.”

The 44-year-old actress has overcome the problem by becoming a favourite of independent-minded directors like Clint Eastwood, who cast her in Mystic River, and the British film-maker Mike Newell, who chose her to play an uptight instructor of poise and elocution in his Mona Lisa Smile.