Oscars: best photos
24 March 1997: Cuba Gooding Jr throws his Oscar into the air after he won Best Supporting Actor for his role in Jerry Maguire Hector Mata/AFP

For many celebrities, bagging an Academy award for a breakthrough role opens a wealth of new opportunities. But for Hollywood actor Cuba Gooding Jr, his stubbornness after the win was the nail in the coffin for his career.

Speaking at the premiere of his directing debut, Louisiana Caviar, the 50-year-old star, who played American footballer Rod Tidwell in the 1996 rom-com, admitted that it took starring in some "utter trash" for him to learn from his mistakes.

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"An actor does a role in a film ... he goes into that screening a year later and he either goes, 'Yeah, Jerry Maguire,' or 'What the f **k was that?'" the Men of Honor star told News.com. au.

"It's more the latter response ... because the director and [actor] did not connect. The director has to be the captain of the ship, so it was always my end game."

He added: "After I won the Oscar [for Jerry Maguire], it was a year before I worked ... I did What Dreams May Come with my love Robin Williams — and then I was banished to the wilderness to do direct-to-video/DVD/Blockbuster movies."

Gooding Jr went on to reveal that Jerry Maguire director Cameron Crowe had taken him aside to advise him only to work with "great directors" but he refused to heed his warnings or take onboard his suggestions. He later turned down career-defining roles in Amistad and Hotel Rwanda.

"I didn't listen. It didn't resonate with me, so I said 'no' to Amistad, I said 'no' to Hotel Rwanda and the list goes on and on and on ... Finally, directors were probably afraid to offer me anything."

After his award-winning role as American footballer Rod Tidwell in Jerry Maguire back in 1996, the actor worked on a number of hit films like Selma, The Butler and American Gangster.

After appearing in over a dozen straight to DVD films, Gooding Jr's career was resurrected in 2016 with a role Ryan Murphy's The People V. OJ Simpson. He played the disgraced NFL star who was at the centre of the 'trial of the century'. The FX mini-series received universal critical acclaim.

Louisiana Caviar is a New Orleans-set thriller which follows a feared Russian-Israeli oligarch whose banishment from the U.S. sets into motion a spiralling chain of events involving a boxer.