ANDREA RISEBOROUGH OSCAR NOMINATIONS 2023

Foreign was rummaging through her bedroom drawers trying hard not to think about the Oscars when suddenly on Tuesday she found out she'd been announced as a leading actress nominee I was busying myself trying to find a sock or something just to take my mind off it admits the tyneside-born actress who fervently issues all that Hollywood Glitz and glamor she even quit movies for two years after filming the acclaimed hit Birdman with Michael Keaton in 2014 feeling she got lost in the Hollywood Machine sometimes you can get really burned out on something you enjoy doing and feel like the sponge is completely wrong dry she admits it's very different now thankfully and I have allowed myself to fall in love again with the purpose of what I am doing her 2023 nomination is all the more astonishing for a Film that you almost certainly have not seen to Leslie gut-wrenching drama film during the pandemic earned a paltry 22 000 pounds at U.S box offices before quickly disappearing to streaming services and has attracted little notice since debuting at London's rain dance Film Festival last Autumn.

However in a profession famed for its narcissism and insecurities Rise Bro is currently riding an unprecedented wave of support from Hollywood stars Gwyneth Paltrow led the cheerleading saying she deserves to win every award there is and all the ones that haven't been invented yet twinslet praised her for one of the greatest performances I have ever seen in my life further Acclaim has come from a whole host of actresses including Charlize Theron Jane Fonda Demi Moore and Courtney Cox Cate Blanchett called riseborough's performance one of the overlooked examples of acting this year but this 41-year-old who grew up in Whitley Bay is overlooked no longer and to Leslie she delivers a heart-rending performance as an alcoholic Texan mother who wins the lottery only to booze away her Fortune losing her family job and home shockingly it is based on the true story of screenwriter Ryan byneko's late mother rise bro painfully immersed herself in the role admitting it's riddled with deep anxiety and is difficult to get through I weighed about 85 pounds it was a deeply heavy psychological space to live in portraying an alcoholic who alienates her family was such a lonely feeling made worse by the fact that we were all masked up and kept separate until the last moment on set not even on the Oscar radar three months ago riseborough has become the Academy Awards FrontRunner rivaling Blanchette herself who at one point seemed to have the golden statuette pre-engraved with her name for portraying an orchestral conductor in the movie tarp I'm astounded I'm not entirely sure how the F this happened she says such an unexpected ray of light it's hardly the first critical Acclaim for the actress who has appeared in films such as Brighton Rock never let me go and Oblivion and the TV series Black Mirror.

But it is the first time she has felt a tidal wave of Hollywood praise buoying her foreign it has been special to feel so supported by the community especially by actors and to feel like the work has broken through that she says her Hollywood success is a world away from her own childhood she was born in wallsend near Newcastle into a family of minors and Factory workers her father George a car  salesman and mother Isabelle a beautician and secretary sent their daughter to a private school that softened her Geordie accent and she embraced youth theater expected to attend Oxford or Cambridge she dropped out of school before her a levels citing boredom and instead worked as a waitress singer and greetings cards maker before attending Elite London drama school Rada there's never been a point in my life where I thought I absolutely have to be an actor she says having spent the past decade living in Los Angeles it just sort of happened but I feel pretty clear that this is definitely what I'm supposed to be doing her chameleonic performances are steeped in  authenticity which perhaps reflects what she admits is her one feeling I'm a really crap liar can't lie to save my life nor is she an extrovert I don't like talking much which is really weird she laughs pick totally the wrong job she particularly enjoyed filming the 2018 horror fantasy movie Mandy with Nicholas Cage because we're both very very quiet we often sat together in total silence Shakespearean trained and voraciously literate rise bro is a deep thinker who one imagines could turn the choice between tea or coffee into a philosophical debate she is frustrated by The public's obsession with Fame and Beauty urging if young women would be empowered with one thing it would be look unself-consciously at the world nor is she always comfortable on her own skin revealing sometimes I feel like my insides are on the outside and my outsides are on the inside she admits to self-doubt confessing it's difficult sometimes you think God I'm effing crap.

But you know it's also not like working down a mine as for her private life she prefers to draw a veil over her years living with American Artist Joe apple and her current relationship with French actor director Kareem Saleh who she met when they co-starred in 2020's Luxor rise Burrows Oscar nomination is the culmination of two back-breaking years in which she filmed a staggering eight movies ranging from the ebullient Royal dolls Matilda the Musical she plays Matilda's awful mother Mrs. Wormwood to the Noir murder mystery Amsterdam opposite Christian Bale and Margot Robbie Leewood Cloud she is now taking greater control over her career rejecting movies that do not feed her intellectually after playing title roles in the 2018 kidnapping drama Nancy and as Nicholas Cage's ill-fated girlfriend in Mandy she starred in 2020 horror movie The Grudge but has no desire to return to that genre foreign I was offered so many of these horror films I realized it's just not for me that particular world she played Tom Cruise's wife in Oblivion but now avoids Blockbuster action films and franchises making to Leslie was a low-budget labor of love filmed in just 19 days with barely enough funds to shoot a couple of takes before moving on to the next scene it had no money for an Oscars marketing campaign that typically costs millions of pounds but unexpectedly Stars rallied to its Aid hosting private screenings for celebrity friends we found people were starting to talk about it rise bro remembers people were asking us where can I see it after inhabiting an alcoholic's Skin So intensely she admits feeling huge gratitude and relief when she completed filming it's like having swum for 20 miles and having reached a rock just having a moment to pant and be wet she says there but for the grace of God.