Life is indeed a box of chocolates for Academy Award winning screenwriter Eric Roth–sometimes you get the really good ganache, and other times you can crack your tooth on a disgusting nut-filled pink fruit goo thing.

Roth, who won an Oscar in 1995 for Forrest Gump, got some great new on December 11: His screenplay for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was nominated for a Golden Globe. A few hours later, the writer heard the worse news unimaginable–he’d lost his entire retirement savings in Bernie Madoff’s mega-Ponzi scheme. Roth told the LA Times last week:

I’m the biggest sucker who ever walked the face of the Earth. But the tragedy is the people who lost their life savings and their dreams.

Roth is one of many in Hollywood whose money became entangled in Madoff’s schemes. The LA Times reports that Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg’s Wunderkinder Foundation

both had investments with Madoff that were made on their behalf by their business manager, Gerald Breslauer, according to people familiar with the situation.

A number of long term investors wiped out by Madoff include "niche workers" in Hollywood who had placed their funds with firms who in turn funneled them to Madoff, taking a cut along the way.

The New York Post reports Roth filed suit this week against his "trusted" investment manager, Stanley Chais, alleging that

Chais collected "enormous fees" for managing hundreds of millions of dollars for his clients but "simply handed over the entirety of these funds" to Madoff’s investment firm. 

 Chais’ firm Brighton Investments is also being sued by  Michael Chaleff of Arlington, Va., who  said he and other investors had lost about $250 million on investment partnerships that Brighton placed with Madoff.  Chaleff’s attorney has filed papers to have the suit certified as a class action on behalf of all the investors who entrusted their money to Chais and Madoff.

According to the LA Times, spokesmen for the Securities and Exchange Commission and the California Department of Corporations said they could find no record of Chais–a philanthropist who had served on charitable boards with Madoff and who now describes himself as a victim of the money manager– registering as an investment advisor or a broker.