For decades, Kathy Bates carried a phrase from her mother: “I don’t understand all the fuss. It’s not as if you cured cancer”.
But Bertye Bates was not simply the woman who minimized her Oscar. She was a mother who had left her own dreams behind—she wanted to be a lawyer—and who sacrificed much so that her daughter could become an actress.
Kathy grew up feeling that perhaps she had been given a life that should have belonged to her. That is why, even after her death, Bates continued speaking about her mother with a mixture of love, guilt, and admiration. “She should have had my life”, she has said.
Perhaps that is why that phrase about the Oscar never stopped weighing on her, because behind it was a frustration that would never disappear. Her mother may have been proud, but the pain of a life she never had would always be stronger than her love for her daughter.
