Emma Thompson "got seriously ill'' campaigning for Oscars

WASHINGTON: The ‘MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING’ actor Emma Thompson has recently opened up about campaigning to win an Academy Award and how it made her “seriously ill.”

“Both times I had to do the Oscars, I got seriously ill,” Thompson said in an interview with Radio Times. “I found the pressure and glare of it too much. It’s astonishing. And then afterwards, you want to lie down in a dark room. You think, ‘Please don’t ask me any questions or make me talk about myself.’ I quickly developed a sort of allergy to that part of the job,” reported Deadline.

Thompson has been nominated for the Academy Awards five times. She has earned two Oscars, the first one in 1993 for ‘Howards End’ and her second one in 1996 for ‘Sense and Sensibility’.

In December 2022, actor James McAvoy said that campaigning for an Oscar “felt cheap” and refused to do so to land a nomination for his work on ‘Atonement’.

“I didn’t want to play that part. I’ll push the film, I’ll try and get bums on seats. But the campaign, I felt… I felt cheap,” he told British GQ.

McAvoy did not receive a nod for his acting but ‘Atonement’ went on to score 7 nominations at the Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress for Saoirse Ronan. The Joe Wright-directed movie took an Oscar for Best Original Score, reported Deadline.

Although McAvoy would not campaign for himself, he is more than happy to do it for his fellow co-stars which led Forest Whitaker to get a nod for his work on ‘The Last King of Scotland’.