Backstage at the 80th Oscars
by Jordan Riefe

Leading Actress Winner Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose):

Marion Cotillard on what the Oscar means to her:

" It's huge, it's huge, and I'm so proud of the movie. We had so much more than fun doing the shooting and doing all this adventure, so for the movie I'm really, really proud. Thank you."

Cotillard on how she approached her character:

"Well, I really dedicated my life to the movie and to play [Edith] Piaf for a few months, and so I didn't I didn't have a life. And when the movie was finished, I realized that I didn't have a life and I didn't know exactly how to go back. But I love life and I love my life so, it was not so hard to go back there, here."

On how the feeling after winning the Oscar:

"Feels so good. I'm totally overwhelmed with joy and then sparkles and fireworks and everything which goes like bam, bam, bam! I just ate all those things and it's happening right here, right now."

On her exchange with Forest Whitaker as she walked off-stage:

"Well, I had the great chance to do a movie with Forest a few years ago and I had a very small part in it. And that I admire him so much, I will add Forest to my list. And so really, I was totally - my brain collapsed, so he helped me to find the plug back to my brain."

Cotillard on the process and confusion of what she's experienced since becoming an Oscar Nominee:

"Well, the confusion of it is that I spend all that month talking about myself, which is not what I prefer to do in life, so it's very long and it's much longer than in France. You don't do this, you don't campaign, and so that was kind of weird, to sort of answer the same question about myself because the movie was released everywhere. The life is of the movie going on, but the movie doesn't need us anymore. And the fun, wow, the fun was to meet all the wonderful actors and actresses, directors and all the beautiful people I've met here and people that I was a big fan of for many years and to share this movie is a lot of fun."

Best Directing Winners the Coen Brothers (No Country for Old Men):

Joel Coen on dealing with controversial themes in the movie and Oscar expectations:

"Well, I think it was a special year in respect that it's almost like a cliche, but all the movies nominated this year were really interesting to me personally, and that is not always the case. And I thought all of them to me, personally, I thought were really fantastically good movies. I, in terms of sort of parsing the themes, it's not something we really do amongst ourselves, or when we are doing interviews either. We adapted a novel by a great American novelist, Cormac McCarthy, and we are trying to do justice to the novel, but beyond that, we're not really ones to sort of parse the themes of the material."

Joel Coen on their directing process and whether they trade-off behind the camera:

"No. We don't trade off. We've always done movies the same way, and basically we are both on all sides at all times and whoever is closest that's being asked, answers it. So there's no real division of labor, and it's very collaborative, just like the rest of movie making is, really. It's a collaborative process from top to bottom. So our collaboration is just another example of that."

Ethan Coen on the success of a movie that deals with bleak elements:

"It's a serious movie, but it has big genre underpinnings, but I think it has a real beating heart, and anything like that is going to be, in some respects, kind of spiky and challenging, but it has been incredibly satisfying."

Ethan Coen on how they deal with sitting at the Oscars and the heightened expectation:

"Oh, boy. You know. Probably Joel as well, trying not to think about it. It's kind of... God!"

Backstage at the 80th Oscars Page 3 - Bardem and Swinton