Jane Campion speaks candidly about losing her baby son in a new interview with Vanity Fair.
Campion’s “The Power of the Dog” is up for 12 Oscars at this year’s ceremony, including Best Director, with the magazine asking the filmmaker if she was feeling any déjà vu after taking home the Best Original Screenplay gong for 1993’s “The Piano”.
She explains how, shortly after she took the movie to Cannes, her son Jasper passed away at less than two weeks old.
“I just couldn’t do anything; I was stunned by the grief experience, and I just couldn’t work.”
READ MORE: Denis Villeneuve, Jane Campion Disagree With Decision To Remove Awards From Oscars Ceremony
She then made her next big appearance at the Oscars 10 months later, where she delivered an emotional acceptance speech while pregnant with her daughter, Alice, now 28.
Campion says of suffering such a horrific loss, “It’s the most humanizing experience I’ve had.
“You feel solidarity with everybody else that’s expressing grief. You can never turn your head away from somebody who’s suffering because you really know that it’s a club.”
She says of such empathy being noticeable in her movies, “I really hope so. I think most of my work comes from that part of me, which is, I’m not really in control of emotion or anything else. It’s a sort of psyche truth.”
