Three long-denied Oscars nominees describe in detail their moments on the podium — and how long the high lasts
Photo: Valerie Macon /AFP via Getty Images In the mid-’90s, the title of Best Actress Who’d Never Won an Oscar was held by Susan Sarandon. She’d been nominated four times without a win, and was coming off a three-in-four-years stretch of Thelma & Louise, Lorenzo’s Oil, and The Client. When she finally won in 1996 for Dead Man Walking, her acceptance speech was fast and breathless, like she’d just finished a 5K.
“You never reach anywhere. You just go on working.” Alexandre Desplat wins Best Original Score at the 2015 Oscars. Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images Though he’s now a two-time winner, Alexandre Desplat’s first trophy was a long time coming. After working regularly in Europe, the French composer burst onto the American film scene after scoring Girl With a Pearl Earring in 2003.
So what did it feel like to get up onstage and finally win? “Fabulous,” he says. He had been judged by a jury of his peers and declared worthy of entering the pantheon. “You’re the flower of the day, and it’s beautiful.” But the win also brought with it a new pressure. “You’re part of the family of the best filmmakers, so your work should be as good, if not better,” Desplat recalls thinking in the wake of the victory. “And I must say for that the next year or two, I was really obsessed by that.
At the 2019 ceremony, Bohemian Rhapsody was widely pegged to take home both sound awards, but Massey didn’t put any stock in those predictions; it would only screw with his head. He needn’t have worried. BoRhap did indeed win Sound Editing and Sound Mixing, and Film Editing and Best Actor, too. The victory was even sweeter for being shared, and for Massey, who’d gotten his start working in the music industry, there was a special meaning in the win coming for this particular project.
Both Desplat and Massey claim they would have been totally happy without ever getting an Oscar, which is of course a slightly easier thing to say after you’ve already won. For O’Connell, constantly coming up short was agonizing. When it came time for the Sound Mixing award, his body temperature would rise, and his heart would start pounding — only when someone else won would things return to normal. “Everybody used to say, ‘Oh, this is your 12th time. You must have a better chance next year.
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