The Oscar Curse: Is Sandra Bullock the Latest Star to Get Hit?

March 18, 2010 — -- They win and then they lose. Their husbands, that is.

Just two weeks after taking home the best actress Oscar for her role in "The Blind Side," People magazine is reporting that Sandra Bullock has moved out of the Southern California home she shares with husband Jesse James just days before tabloid reports surfaced that they are having marital troubles.

People reports that Bullock left on Monday. She also abruptly pulled out of the London premiere for "Blind Side."

In a statement released to People magazine on Wednesday, Bullock wrote, "Due to unforeseen personal reasons, a trip abroad to support 'The Blind Side' has been deemed impossible at this time. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and thank you for your continued support of the film."

Messages left for representatives of Bullock and James were not immediately returned.

According to an article in In Touch magazine, a model who had hoped to work for James' company, West Coast Choppers, said she had an affair with James, much of which occurred while Bullock, 45, was filming "The Blind Side."

Bullock isn't alone. Several other Oscar-winning actresses have had the similar misfortune of having their personal lives unravel as their acting careers flourished.

"The Oscar curse is that, more often than not, once a woman wins an Oscar, her romantic life falls apart," said Bradley Jacobs, a senior editor at Us Weekly magazine. "We've seen it happen repeatedly in the past ten years."

Earlier this week, Kate Winslet and husband Sam Mendes announced that after seven years of marriage, they were divorcing.

Mendes, an Oscar-winning director for 1999's "American Beauty" and Winslet, who won the Academy Award in 2009 for her role in "The Reader," were not seen together at this year's awards. But in her acceptance speech in 2009, Winslet said she was "lucky to have a wonderful husband and two beautiful children who let me do what I love and who love me just the way that I am."

Winslet and Mendes split two years after they worked together on "Revolutionary Road," a film about a couple in an unsatisfying marriage.

Oscar Curse Hits Several Actresses

In 2006, Reese Witherspoon won the best actress Oscar for her performance in "Walk the Line," thanking her "wonderful husband" in her speech. But by October of that same year, Witherspoon and her husband of seven years, fellow actor Ryan Phillippe, announced they were separating. Their divorce was finalized the next year.

Actress Hilary Swank split with her husband of 11 years, Chad Lowe, in 2005, less than a year after she won an Oscar for her role in in "Million Dollar Baby." Swank had won an Oscar in 2000 for "Boys Don't Cry."

And in 2002, Halle Berry took home the best actress Oscar for "Monster's Ball," and then took home divorce papers the next year, when she split from husband and singer Eric Benet. She referred to Benet in her Oscar speech as a "joy" in her life. The split was reportedly spurred by Benet's sex addiction.

Winning best actress for "As Good as it Gets," Helen Hunt thanked Hank Azaria, her partner, who then became her husband in 1998. By 2000, the couple's relationship was over.

Even boyfriends aren't immune to the so-called Oscar curse, and neither are wives.

In 2001, Julia Roberts won best actress for her role in "Erin Brockovich" and included her then-boyfriend Benjamin Bratt in her speech. The pair broke up a few months later.

Gwyneth Paltrow thanked Ben Affleck, referring to him as her "friend" during her 1999 acceptance speech for best actress in "Shakespeare in Love," but ended it with the actor later that summer.

In 2009, when Sean Penn won the best actor trophy for "Milk," he thanked everyone from the director to the screenwriter, but he failed to mention his wife, actress Robin Wright Penn, sitting in the audience. Seven months later, the on-again-off-again couple announced by press release that they were legally separating after 11 years of marriage.

ABC News' Luchina Fisher contributed to this report.