Oh dear, oh dear. And it was all going so well for Sandra Bullock – she had the man, she had the blockbuster movie and she even had the little golden statue to grasp to her chest. But it seems that she, along with Kate Winslet (and Halle Berry and Julia Roberts), has been smote with the ‘Curse of the Oscar’…or without the bathos, the alleged ‘disintegration’ of her marriage.

Yes, Jesse James (yes a descendent of the outlaw Jesse James – hence the tenuous headline!!) has allegedly been having an affair with heavily tattooed Michelle ‘bombshell’ Grace – who has given a salacious account of her 11 month affair with James, who she called her ‘vanilla gorilla’, to an American tabloid.

Since then, Jesse has had to issue an apology and Sandra has abandoned her promotional tour of her Oscar winning opus, The Blind Side – blamed on ‘unforeseen circumstances’ in a statement from Warner Brothers. 

What has followed has been an onslaught from the world’s media, casting Sandra as the distraught victim forced into hiding, Jesse as a callous philanderer (reports claim that Jesse and Michelle sat in bed watching Sandra at an awards ceremony)  and Michelle as Jezebel, luring the married man into her web of deceit and lewd text messages. Sound familiar? Yes – not disimilar to the Aniston/Pitt/Jolie love triangle, or the more recent Winslet / Mendes / Hall menage a trois.

 I mean, would it be impossible to conceive that maybe Sandra is relieved she knows the cut of her mans jib finally, and that instead of staying at home watching SATC  and eating ice cream *insert any generic ‘lonely girl’ scenario here*, she is perhaps composing herself and dealing  with the revelations? Or maybe, it’s not true and she is merely hiding away from the prying media, refusing to dignify the entire situation with a comment?

No – of course not. A woman can put in the performance of a lifetime, win the ultimate accolade in her profession, look incredible, possess a healthy sense of self-deprecating humour, appear in more hit comedies than many of her peers AND save that bus full of people from a bomb – but, if she ain’t got a man…well…it would only be fair to hound her until she admits that her life is over, that she has failed her gender and so and so forth. 

It seems that of all the roles we’ve seen her play – we’re only interested in Sandra playing the doting wife, and now, the grieving singleton.

Photo by Kevin Mazur/WireImage