Now that the best-dressed lists have been assembled (Cate Blanchett in my book), awards pool winners decided (never vote what should win, always vote what will), and most clever food puns awarded (my Baked Jeff Brie-dges took the top prize!) there’s only one Oscar-related category left to wager – how soon before the Best Actress Winner gets divorced?

Or in this case of this year’s winner Natalie Portman, how soon before she and Benjamin Millepied (baby daddy slash new fiance – in that order…) call it quits?

I was asked to cover the topic for AOL’s new lifestyle vertical MyDaily. Here are my thoughts.

It’s become a well-publicized fact that the former winners for Best Actress have a curiously high rate of ending their relationships in the few years following their win. Julia Roberts and Benjamin Bratt called it quits after her 2001 win for Erin Brocovich. The very next year Halle Berry and Eric Benet divorced after she won for Monster’s Ball. In ’05 it was Hillary Swank ended her 13-year marriage to Chad Lowe one year after collecting the award for Million Dollar Baby then Reese Witherspoon split with Ryan Phillippe after her Walk The Line success. And of course the one America still shutters at the thought of – Sandra Bullock’s whip-lash fall from Awards’ Season sweetheart to scorned wife of the philandering Jesse James.

How could a trend that consistent possibly be a coincidence?

According the rag mags, the Best Actress Curse is a classic case of men who can’t stand a career spent on the arm of someone infinitely more successful. It’s true that in all the examples above the men were far out-shined by their winning women. But in my opinion (full disclore: that of a non-Oscar-winning non actress who’s only six month into life in L.A.) – there are far more what-went-wrong options than just that:

She’s after power couple status

There’s Brangelina-level power couple-dom, and there’s everything else. And with that level of combined star power comes a world of opportunity and access that’s the goal of every fame monger. So if you’re a Best Actress winner looking to maintain your reign you need a man with just as much star power at your side. In that case the Ryan Phillippe’s and Chad Lowe’s of the world just aren’t enough leading a actresses caught up in the fame game to either end it or inspire the man to do the dirty work.

He didn’t bargain for the A-list life

Not to be confused with the “his confidence can’t handle being the B-lister in an A-list life. Winning the Academy Award for best actress catapults a star and her a career to a place you cannot prepare to go no matter how close you are to the Hollywood machine. The control an A-list actress has over her personal life changes after that win, and with that so do family priorities, relationship nurturing, and a whole host of things we normal folk will never understand. It is entirely possible that even the most understanding man – even a man who’s spent his whole life around the movie business – could experience what it means to be married to someone on top and decide that life is not for him. In this case it’s not her fault nor is it his – the downfall of their relationship is just a product of one person reaching the top.

She’s “advised” against him

One of the most fascinating things about Hollywood is the hundreds of puppet masters who make this crazy world go ’round. From rumors as big as the fact that Katie Holmes’ and Tom Cruises’ relationship is just a contract set up by both their “people” to things as simple as an actresses’ publicist making it clear that her marriage is hurting not helping her image. Unlike the actress in the first scenario – the one after power-couple status – this actress has given the people managing her career too much influence over her decisions. She’s lost control to the point where she can’t trust herself to make her own decisions.

It’s just a numbers game

It’s not that Best Actress winners get divorced in conspicuously high numbers it’s that all actresses get divorced in numbers that make most people steer clear of LaLa Land. The Academy Award-winners are just a coincidental sub-set of a bigger trend. That trend very well may be tied to all the issues above, but the Oscar curse is actually just an Actress curse with a made-for-media-attention twist.

He really can’t handle being less successful

Or maybe it is just that Benjamin Bratt couldn’t handle playing second fiddle to Julia Roberts. Maybe Jesse cheated on Sandra because her success drove his confidence so low that he went elsewhere for attention. Much of Hollywood is insecure narcissists who live and die by their page count in People and number rank in the annual Hollywood Top 40. Maybe the men who deflate our beloved Best Actresses with a post-win divorce just can’t handle being the duller star of the set.

Whichever theory is at the root of this unfortunate coincidence I hope Natalie and Ben can prove it wrong. Maybe the trick is that if the actress is engaged but not married, has a baby well on the way and is under the age of 30 the curse doesn’t hold?

Only TMZ will tell…