Nancy Olson, 96, Says Her Oscar-Nominated Role in “Sunset Boulevard” Made Her Leave Hollywood: ‘Movie Stars Are Sad Creatures’

• Nancy Olson received an Oscar nomination for her role as Betty Schaefer in 1950's Sunset Boulevard

• Despite the acclaim, Olson said in a new interview that the movie’s story of Hollywood mistreating a former star made her turn away from the industry

• Olson said she learned that movie stars are "sad," without happy families and lives

It’s not often your first Oscar nomination makes you want to turn away from acting — but that’s what happened to Sunset Boulevard star Nancy Olson.

Olson, 96, opened up about her experience with the film and its effect on her career on the Feb. 6 episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s It Happened in Hollywood podcast.

In 1950's Sunset Boulevard, directed by Billy Wilder, Olson played Betty Schaefer, an ambitious young screenwriter trying to find her place in the industry. She becomes entangled with William Holden’s Joe Gillis, who himself is involved with former silent movie star Norma Desmond, played by Gloria Swanson, herself a former silent movie star.

The movie was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, including a Best Supporting Actress nod for Olson, who was only 22. But it only won three: for the score, production design and screenplay.

“I did not expect to win, and I did not win,” Olson said on the podcast. “I felt very rewarded being nominated, and that was quite enough.” She added that she had a feeling she wouldn’t win when she was seated at the back of the audience.

Still, she said, “Gloria Swanson and Billy Wilder, the picture, everything should have won.” And while she said the competition included some “wonderful movies,” Sunset Boulevard “has outlasted them all.”

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The movie’s legacy, she said, is that it “reveals the truth” about Hollywood and the movie industry. “It was built on commodities to sell, and the commodities were the actors and the actresses, and they were made bigger than their reality. They were figures that were used to sell motion pictures. Therefore, they were made more beautiful, more desirable, more sexual than it was possible to be.” She said it was the same as the treatment of Marilyn Monroe.

Olson guessed that the movie was widely snubbed at the Oscars because members of the industry were “uncomfortable” at how it exposed that reality.

And because it exposed that reality, Olson ultimately realized she didn’t want that fame for herself. “Movie stars were sad creatures,” she said. “I understood Norma Desmond, and I understood Marilyn Monroe. And I wanted a life.”

“I knew that movie stars had a period of time, and then they were thrown away,” she said. “What more did I need to know than about Norma Desmond? I'm a doctor's daughter from the Midwest. I said, ‘How many movie stars are happily married, have children, are part of larger families, aunts, uncles, cousins, which was my life?’ Nobody. So I couldn't imagine existing in the world.”

Olson also said she thought the movie was Swanson’s “revenge” for being thrown away the same way Desmond was. Sunset Boulevard was also adapted into a musical, running once again on Broadway, now starring Nicole Scherzinger.

Olson appeared in more films in the ‘50s, but by the mid-’60s she had mostly pulled away from acting. From 1950 to 1957, she was married to Broadway lyricist Alan Jay Lerner, with whom she shared two daughters. “I moved to New York, and I said, ‘I do not want to be a movie star.’ And they said, ‘You’ve no more money. We're gonna renew your contract with a much larger, you know, amount of money.' I said, 'I'm sorry. I cannot be a movie star.' ” At the time, she worked 11-hour days, six days a week. “I was so tired.”

Related: Rita Moreno Says Playing Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard 'Ruined My Knees Forever': 'It Was Brutal!' (Exclusive)

In 1962 she married Alan W. Livingston, with whom she shared a son. “That's a happy part of my life, are my children and grandchildren.”

Olson officially retired from acting in the mid-'80s, though she’s made a few on-screen appearances since. She wrote about her life in her 2022 memoir A Front Row Seat: An Intimate Look at Broadway, Hollywood, and the Age of Glamour.

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