Stars React to Oscar Nominations

ByABC News
February 13, 2002, 8:22 AM

Feb. 13 -- It's been said that acting is reacting. Newly anointed Oscar nominees certainly had a lot to react to and so did those apparently snubbed.

The news from Hollywood Tuesday clearly reverberated around the world.

In his native home of New Zealand, Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson received the news at 2:30 a.m. that his film got 13 nominations as many as Gone With the Wind, Shakespeare in Love and Forest Gump. Only All About Eve and Titanic have surpassed that, with 14 each."To be nominated is almost as good as winning," said Jackson, whose now working on the second and third parts of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which have already been shot and are scheduled for release in December of 2002 and 2003.

"It's just absolutely, absolutely tremendous because there were over 2,500 people who worked on these movies and continue to work on them," he said. "These 13 nominations in some way have touched all those people." Connelly: How Does This TV Work?

Jennifer Connelly, who portrayed the nurturing wife of schizophrenic mathematician in A Beautiful Mind, was in Berlin for a film festival. She and the film's screenwriter, Akiva Goldsmith, hunkered down in a hotel room, trying to get some news from America.

"I had the bright idea to make the volume a little louder, just before it came on, because it was kind of low and we inadvertently turned the TV off and I just sort of scrambled to find the button to turn it back on," Connelly said.

"We couldn't find the button and we got the wrong channel and we were flipping around. All of a sudden we just started laughing But we got it figured out." Finally they found out both earned an Oscar nod. Kidman: 'What Film?'

In Sweden, where Nichole Kidman is shooting Dogville, she was in the middle of a heavy scene when her dialect coach held up a sign that read, "You were nominated for Best Actress." Kidman says mouthed back,"For what film?" and went right back to the scene.