Tomei stumbled after winning the Oscar, starring in the duds "Untamed Heart" and "The Perez Family," but she also had to endure the urban myth that Jack Palance announced her name by mistake on Oscar night. Meanwhile, she quietly chipped away at the Curse with solid supporting performances in small films like "Unhook the Stars" and "Slums of Beverly Hills" and in big-ticket Hollywood fare like "What Women Want."

Now Tomei's up for another supporting-actress Oscar, for playing the older woman whose romance with Sissy Spacek's son leads to tragedy in "In the Bedroom." Things are different this time, she says.

"Now I know more about the business and have an appreciation of what one goes through," Tomei, 37, says by phone from Los Angeles. "The last time was about the beauty of not knowing."

Of her career choices after winning the Oscar, she says flatly: "I did the best I could do."

A veteran of smart, low-budget films, Tomei couldn't predict that "Bedroom" would be the one to break through, especially since it was being directed by a first-timer, actor Todd Field.

"You really have no way of knowing, even though it seemed like a good project," she says. "Sissy is such an incredible actress, and I liked Todd. . . . It was like I had a feeling (the film would do well)."

When choosing roles, "I tend to respond thematically . . . I don't like things that are super politically correct," she says, and that's why she liked playing a mother in her 30s dating a college-age guy. "It's another step toward people being nonjudgmental."

With the success of "Bedroom" and the limited imagination of Hollywood, does this mean she's being offered more "older woman" roles?

"No, thank God," she says with a laugh. "I'm not that old."

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com.)