Kathy Bates

She hasn't always been on “the A-team going to Ibiza or whatever”— and thank heavens for that. A candid interview with a legend in a league of her own

- DAVID CANFIELD

THERE'S BRUCE!” HUDDLED inside on a rainy February afternoon, Kathy Bates points with delight at the shark from Jaws, which dangles from the ceiling, mouth agape and menacingly frozen in time. It’s the only existing full-scale model from the 1975 classic—and the largest object in Los Angeles’s Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Next to it, there’s a gallery with the word Zoetrope on the door, which reminds Bates of the production lot Francis Ford Coppola used to own. “That's where we shot Misery,” she says offhandedly. She keeps walking.

We've just begun an hour-long guided tour through 130 years of filmmaking, and whether or not Bates is the kind of person to shout about it, she’s been a meaningful part of that history. She won the best-actress Oscar for Misery in 1991, when she was 42 years old, and has since starred in multiple other films that won Oscars and been nominated for another three herself across three different decades. Mementos from her projects are scattered in the museum’s collection, which gives us an excuse to wander around like any other movie lovers. Bates marvels at a snippet of An American in Paris: “I want to watch that again when I get home.” She urges strangers passing by to listen in to our guide: “Hang out and hear what she has to say!” And she’s rendered speechless by footage from a range of 1920s films that have been painstakingly restored to their original colors for the first time ever. She sits through the whole reel as if having a spiritual experience.

This is the world that Bates grew up in awe of and eventually made her home. The Memphis native is the youngest of three girls and was raised by parents much older than those of her peers. (Her father, an engineer, was born in 1900.)