(16 Mar 2022) PENELOPE CRUZ, AUNJANUE ELLIS, CIARAN HINDS NEVER DREAMED OF OSCARS MOMENT
Actors Penélope Cruz, Aunjanue Ellis and Ciarán Hinds are all vying for top acting prizes at this year's Oscars but none of them ever dreamed of experiencing such a moment in their lives.
Growing up in central Spain, Cruz said she "didn't think that was possible."
"I didn't know anybody who worked in movies or in music or anything related to art. I just didn't know those people, so I didn't know how that kind of life would be," she said recently at a luncheon honoring Oscar nominees.
Cruz, who already won Oscar I'm 2009 and is nominated again this year for her performance in "Madres Paralelas," said she had been doing ballet for eight years when she thought she'd like to try acting around the age of 12.
So she told her parents.
"The fact that they didn't laugh at me gave me a lot of encouragement," said the 47-year-old, adding that her parents warned her to keep studying, performing ballet and to have a backup plan.
"I looked for an agent and to our surprise, I got some callbacks in the castings, and I was very shocked. And then it was one movie, another movie, and then I had to choose. For example, to stop the training with classical ballet, which I was doing six days a week for four hours a day. So I had to decide," she said. "And I decided to just continue making movies. I didn't know if my first few movies were just like first and last, but … I feel very lucky, very grateful that I've been able to do this job that I love so much since I was almost since I was a teenager."
Meanwhile Aunjanue Ellis, who is nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for her performance in the uplifting family drama "King Richard," felt much like Cruz before she started acting.
"I didn't want to be an actor, and I think it's because when you come from where I come from, which is backwoods Mississippi and being raised in the '70s and '80s, there weren't a lot of examples of that," said the 53-year-old Ellis, a first-time nominee.
Hollywood "just felt like Mars," she continued.
"You got to take care of your family so you are expected to do very practical things to do that. I didn't give myself permission to think I could have a life, live a life or make a living in any sort of creative way at all," she said.
"It wasn't until maybe 10 years ago, and it was because I kept working, you know, that I was like, 'OK, maybe I might be doing this acting thing. I keep getting this paycheck,'" Ellis said.
Like Ellis, Belfast-born Ciarán Hinds never believed he could be an actor because of where he grew up.
"There was a small professional theater there when I was growing up, but most of them (the actors) were part-time. They had two jobs because you couldn't hardly make a living out of it. We never thought of being on television or being in film," he said.
Economic times were tough, and Northern Ireland was in the middle of the Troubles. His parents wanted him to be smart.
"My parents suggested I get something behind me, like a degree of some kind so that when I turned out to be a complete failure that I had something to fall back on," he said. "In which case it was supposed to be studying law at the university in Belfast, Queen's University."
Though the 69-year-old Hinds did study law for a time, it didn't take too long for him to realize he had to be an actor, so he left his family for London and the theater.
Now Hinds is nominated for a best supporting actor for his work in "Belfast," an achingly personal tale about a Northern Ireland family who must choose between loved ones and safety when the Troubles begin.
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18 сен 2024
