Having surprised many by netting a Golden Globe nomination for her debut acting performance in American Horror Story: Hotel, Lady Gaga now has her sights set on an Oscar.
The pop star, who impressed many with a performance of The Sound of Music at last year’s Oscars ceremony, is intent on returning to the Dolby Theater next month to perform her ballad Til It Happens to You, which appears in the campus rape documentary The Hunting Ground.
Gaga, together with the song’s co-writer Diane Warren and film-makers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, mingled with Academy members at a party for the film at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, California on Tuesday.
The subject of the documentary, which premiered at the Sundance film festival last January and played in many college campuses across the US, resonated with the singer. In December she discussed during a filmed discussion with the New York Times having been raped.
“I didn’t tell anyone for, I think, seven years,” the singer told the Times. “I didn’t know how to think about it. I didn’t know how to accept it. I didn’t know how not to blame myself, or think it was my fault. It was something that really changed my life. It changed who I was completely.”
Gaga said that the man who assaulted her “didn’t actually believe he raped me”. She first spoke of the incident, which occurred when she was 19, on the Howard Stern Show in 2014.
Following a screening of The Hunting Ground, Gaga performed the song at a grand piano seated next to Warren, who held the singer’s microphone. Before Gaga sang, Warren – who has been nominated for the best song Oscar seven times but has never won – read a moving letter sent to her by a fan who wrote about being raped by her school principal. Said Warren: “I want to take this time to thank Lady Gaga for going on this amazing journey – this song is helping so many people.”
Gaga demurred. “It’s truly not because of myself that this is reaching people over the world, it’s because of the team that is here today,” she said. “Diane really had to convince me that it was OK to sing about this and reveal this about myself. It’s just one of those things ... that until it happens to you, you don’t know how it feels.”
- The nominations for the 88th Academy awards will be announced 14 January
