Oscar curse for Best Actress winner?

TORONTO, Feb. 26 (UPI) -- Oscar winners for Best Actress are at a higher risk of divorce than nominees who do not win or the Best Actor winners, Canadian and U.S. researchers say.

Tiziana Casciaro of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, Colleen Stuart, a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, and Sue Moon, a doctoral student at the Rotman School, say many Best Actress winners -- Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Halle Berry, Hilary Swank and Kate Winslet among them -- were divorced not long after winning Oscars.

The study of 751 nominees for Best Actor and Best Actress of the Academy Awards from 1936 to 2010 shows Best Actress winners have a 63 percent chance of their marriages ending sooner than the marriages of non-winners.

The median marriage duration for Best Actress winners was 4.3 years, lower than the 9.51 year marriage duration for non-winners, while the difference between Best Actor non-winners married for a median of 12.66 years and Best Actor winners with a median marriage duration of 11.97 was not statistically significant.

"It appears that even the marriages of Hollywood actresses at the top of their careers are not immune to the consequences of violating social norms that affect the wider population," Stuart says in a statement. "Our results suggest that the sudden success reduces the longevity of their marriages."