It’s always interesting to see what happens to the once-popular Oscar-winning celebrities whose careers don’t take off like everyone was expecting. Some make minor headlines with their antics and spectacularly bad movies, like Cuba Gooding Jr., while others just kind of fade away, popping up occasionally at an event or premiere and reminding us that they were once destined for Hollywood greatness.

Have you heard about Helen Hunt, Mira Sorvino, or Marisa Tomei lately? Tomei has had plenty of work in the 15 years since she won an Oscar for My Cousin Vinny, but not much of it has been memorable or high-profile. She had a drop-in role in John Cusack’s current film Grace is Gone, about a man who loses his soldier wife to the Iraq war. Tomei’s scene was cut after test audiences took offense to a grieving widower having a conversation with a pretty girl. No one bothered to tell Tomei she was out of the film until she was about to show up at the premiere, though:

Oscar winner Marisa Tomei suffered a shocking humiliation when… producers of the new John Cusack movie Grace is Gone finally remembered to tell her she’d been snipped from the flick - and it could have been even worse because Tomei was told only minutes before her scheduled bow at the premiere! The star was actually en route to the screen when a staffer alerted nitwit execs that incredibly, nobody had bothered to tell her that her cameo role had been cut because of negative feedback from test audiences. In the film, Cusack loses his GI wife in Iraq and goes on a road trip to ease the pain - and while his kids are swimming in a Florida motel pool, he strikes up a conversation iwth Tomei. Test audiences objected, saying he shouldn’t be speaking to a woman so soon after his wife’s death.

[From The National Enquirer, Mike Walker’s column, December 24, 2007]

Tomei headed home and didn’t show at the premiere after she heard that she was axed, and can you blame her? How thoughtless and rude of producers not to tell her she was cut until right before the premiere.

She appeared in two other films this year, Wild Hogs and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, which was only out in limited release but earned rave reviews. Next year Tomei is slated for War, Inc., also with John Cusack and The Night Job, which sounds like a flop to me since her costars are listed as Ray Liotta and Mickey Rourke. The film is listed as “in production,” and that is likely to mean that’s it’s delayed by the writer’s strike, which has no end in sight. What’s a struggling Oscar winner to do?

Marisa Tomei is shown at the DKNy Delicious launch party on 11/7/07, thanks to PRPhotos.

I loved her in “My Cousin Vinnie.” Marisa Tomei is one of my favorite underrated celebs. When you have an Oscar at home next to your bed stand you can pretty much do as you please. In effort of not letting the man get her down, she once stole a band aid.

“She tells the New York Daily News, “I have stolen recently… Band-Aids! There were five Band-Aids in the pack, and I got a sticker shock at the price, so I just grabbed one, which was all I needed.”

[New York Daily News Via Starpulse]

She defended her actions as preparation for her latest role as a thief in “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.” Marisa bravely took on the movie in which she has a topless scene. Her co-stars include Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke. The plot involves two brothers who decide to rob their parents’ jewelry store. They come to the conclusion that they get the loot and their parents will get insurance money and everyone wins. She has already asked her family toskip seeing the film due to her sex scenes in her role as the wife of Hoffman’s character and mistress of Hawke’s.

“I’m grown up now, so I guess it’ll really hit home. I spoke to mom about it the other day and I said, ‘I don’t know if you really want to come to this or if you want to see it.’ I’d rather you didn’t. ‘She said, ‘We heard already, we know about it’. ‘Having the Sidney factor balances it out. I felt even more comfortable than I did just acting fully clothed. I seem to tap into these kinds of women, the ones you call ’slut’.”

Picture note by Jaybird: Here’s Marissa at the Project ALS Tomorrow is Tonight 10th Anniversary fundraiser on October 16th. Image thanks to PR Photos.