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Kathy Bates has shared her disbelief after she was reminded about a detail she had forgotten from her Oscars acceptance speech in 1991.
Speaking to CBS Sunday Morning host Ben Mankiewicz, Bates was reflecting on when she won Best Actress for her role in the Stephen King horror film Misery, and how her mother reacted to her win.
The 76-year-old Titanic actor was explaining that her mother, who she had a difficult relationship with, had been unenthusiastic about her achievement at the Oscars, but Bates misrecalled a specific detail.
Speaking about her mother, Bates told Mankiewicz: “She said, ‘I don’t know what all the excitement is about, you didn’t discover the cure for cancer,’” adding, “I forgot to thank her that night.”
Mankiewicz then informed the Matlock star that she did actually thank her mother, and showed Bates a clip of her acceptance speech and it all came flooding back to her.
Bates said in the original clip: “I’d like to thank my family, my friends. My mom at home, my dad, who I hope is watching somewhere.”
As she watched back the clip, Bates immediately put her hand to her mouth in disbelief as she grew emotional.
“Thank you! Why did I think I didn’t thank her,” she said emotionally. “Oh, what a relief.”
Asked why the fact she mentioned her mother meant so much to her, Bates said: “Because she should’ve had my life.”
“When she died, I said, ‘Come into me,’” Bates continues. “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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Last month, the actor announced her retirement ahead of the release of her new show Matlock.
Bates stars as the septuagenarian lawyer Madeline “Matty” Matlock, in the reboot of the Eighties and Nineties original, which starred Andy Griffith.
Speaking about her retirement, the actor said she almost quit the industry after an aborted movie, which she refused to name, left her sobbing on her sofa.
“Everything I’ve prayed for, worked for, clawed my way up for, I am suddenly able to be asked to use all of it,” she told The New York Times of her new show. “And it’s exhausting. This is my last dance.”
Bates’ performances in American Horror Story and Two and a Half Men earned her two Primetime Emmy Awards. Playing nurse Annie Wilkes in Misery won her a Golden Globe award as well as the Oscar for Best Actress, and she won a second Golden Globe for playing Jay Leno’s manager Helen Kushnick in The Late Shift.
