JULIAN FELLOWES - FELLOWES' OSCAR NERVES

FELLOWES' OSCAR NERVES

Actor/writer JULIAN FELLOWES was so nervous when he collected his Best Screenplay Oscar at the 2002 Academy Awards, he was convinced he would fall off the stage and into the orchestra pit. Fellowes won his Oscar for writing GOSFORD PARK, and admits the red carpet treatment at the Hollywood event left him dazzled. He says, "I hadn't really prepared a speech but I had decided who I was going to thank. "There used to be a kind of lectern that you could grip on to but when I got on stage there was nothing but this wire with a mic and I suddenly got a strange vertigo and I thought, 'My God, I'm going to be the first Oscar winner to fall forward into the orchestra pit.' "Afterwards you get taken upstairs. You go into a room where more or less every journalist in the world is assembled. "And I said to GWYNETH PALTROW, 'This is madness.' And she said, 'Welcome to my life.' Which I found quite chilling."