Kathy Bates Gets Emotional When Interviewer Reveals the Truth About Her Oscar Acceptance Speech

Kathy Bates had it all wrong. 

For years, the Matlock star was under the impression that she’d neglected to thank her mother in her 1991 Oscar acceptance speech. But it turns out, her memory had played a trick on her. During a recent interview with Ben Mankiewicz, she learned that she had given her mom a shout-out from the stage. The realization left the 76-year-old actor visibly emotional. 

Kathy Bates’ mom wasn’t impressed when she won an Oscar 

Bates has had a long career on stage and screen, but she may be best known for playing Annie Wilkes in Misery. She won an Academy Award for her unsettling turn as a fan who can’t handle it when an author kills off her favorite character. But her own mother wasn’t exactly impressed with her accomplishments. 

“When I won the Oscar for Misery, she said, ‘I don’t know what all the excitement is about. You didn’t discover the cure for cancer,’” Bates recalled in an interview that aired on CBS Sunday Morning on Oct. 6. (In a 2016 interview with Vanity Fair, Bates also revealed that her mother dismissed her award-winning performance by telling her, “You were just playing yourself.”)

“I forgot to thank her that night,” she added. 

“You know, you did thank her,” Mankiewicz replied. “At the end of your speech. You did thank her.” 

Bates insisted she’d left her mother out of her speech. But the TCM host had proof. 

“I’d like to thank my family, my friends. My mom at home, my dad, who I hope is watching somewhere,” Bates says in a clip from the ceremony. (Bates’ father died in 1989.)

Bates is the youngest of three children and has said she did not always feel wanted. 

“As I got older, I realized that I wasn’t meant to be,” she recently told the New York Times. “That has informed my evolution as a human being, and who you are as a human being, it’s who you are as an artist.”

The ‘Matlock’ star says her mother ‘should have had my life’ 

Bates was visibly shocked when she watched the video. The American Horror Story star covered her mouth with her hands and couldn’t speak for several moments. 

“Thank you,” she said. “Why did I think I didn’t thank her? Oh, what a relief.”

Mankiewicz asked why it meant so much to discover she had acknowledged her mother in her Oscar speech. 

“Because she should have had my life,” Bates replied. “When she died, 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. Wow. Thank you so much for that.”

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