Billie Eilish just became the youngest 2-time Oscar winner at 22. As a kid, this musical made her worry she wasn't 'going to amount to anything.'
When Billie Eilish was 12, she felt like a “failure.”
At the time, while watching the musical Matilda, the now 22-year-old songwriter thought she hadn’t yet accomplished enough.
“I remember being 12, believe it or not, and seeing this musical and sobbing my eyes out and thinking, ‘Damn, I’m a failure, and I won’t be able to have a career.’ I was 12,” Eilish said in the Oscars press room after receiving her second Academy Award, for the Barbie ballad “What Was I Made For?” “I was bawling, back in the nosebleeds, and I was like, ‘I’m never going to amount to anything because I’m not in Matilda.’”
Eilish became the youngest two-time Oscar winner on Sunday night, when she and her brother, Finneas O’Connell, took home the Academy Award for Best Original Song. That comes only two years after the pair won in the same category for “No Time to Die” from the James Bond film of the same name.
“I had a nightmare about this last night,” Eilish said when she accepted the award onstage at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. “I just didn’t think this would happen. I was not expecting this. I feel so incredibly lucky and honored.”
After thanking Barbie director Greta Gerwig, she added, “I’m so grateful for this song and for this movie and the way that it made me feel, and this goes out to everyone who was affected by the movie and how incredible it is.”
In addition to Sunday’s Oscar win, the song has also garnered a Golden Globe for Best Original Song as well as Grammys for Song of the Year and Best Song Written for Visual Media.
Eilish holds a total of nine Grammy Awards and two Golden Globes. However, the singer has only had one song — “Bad Guy” — hold the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and it was for a week in April 2019.
Time magazine featured Eilish among its most influential teens of 2018 when she was only 16. The rising pop star told the outlet at the time that she hoped to someday “direct music videos and design everything from shoes to cars.”
While Eilish has come a long way since her Matilda days, she offered some advice for those worried about their own timelines for success.
“Give yourself some time, and do what you love,” she said in the Oscars press room. “I know that’s easier said than done.”