Chinatown Sweep

I dunno. Robert Towne DID win for Chinatown, but I would say his career didn't quite achieve the same later pinnacles as Nicholson, who failed to get the Oscar. Hard to see how Nicholson's career could have been any more prestitgious.

Maybe Towne would have had fewer Mission Impossibles in his repertoire and more Greystokes had he lost. As for Polanski, I suspect he'd be making the same sort of films, with the same type of public reception(whatever that may be). If he's currently estranged from Hollywood(debatable, he still manages to get big names in his pictures), it's probably more to do with his legal problems than with any failure to win an Oscar.

I'm not sure how Faye Dunaway's subsequent career is regarded, nor that of anyone else who was nominated. Overall, I'd say it's possible to overstate the significance of an actual Oscar victory on someone's career. Richard Attenborough won for E.T. in 1983, but has had a far less storied career than Spielberg since then. (On the other hand, Ben Kingsley has done pretty well.)
 
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