There are only 79 Best Actress Oscar winners. It’s an elite club to which only the best of the best gain membership. Most actresses will work their entire lives for a role worthy of an Oscar nod. And even then, they’ll have to compete against their peers for the award. Kathy Bates is among acting’s most coveted award winners, but she says her mother’s reaction was not quite what she expected.
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Kathy Bates Won An Oscar For Her Role In Misery in 1991
She played Annie Wilkes, a disturbed woman who took her favorite author captive in her home. Kathy’s performance was both chilling and remarkably real. But according to her, an Oscar didn’t mean much to her mother.
She recently told CBS Sunday Morning‘s Ben Mankiewicz, “When I won the Oscar for Misery, she said, ‘I don’t know what all the excitement about. You didn’t discover the cure for cancer,'”
She added that she “forgot” to thank her mother during her acceptance speech, something she appeared to regret. But Ben quickly corrected Kathy. “You know, you did thank her at the end of your speech,” Ben said. “You thanked her.”
“No, I did not. I did not,” Kathy argued. “You go back and look at it. I didn’t.”
Ben rolled back the tape, and Kathy very clearly thanked her family, specifically her mom. The camera panned to the star, who looked visibly shaken.
“Thank you! Why did I think I didn’t thank her?” She asked.
After all these years, Ben then asked why that meant so much to her. A tearful Kathy replied, “Cause she should have had my life. When she died, I remember I said, ‘Come into me.’ I wanted her spirit to come into me, even though we had so many difficulties. I wanted her spirit to come into me and enjoy everything I was enjoying because of what she’d given up.”
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