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Hughes wanted to hide after pregancy
Hughes wanted to hide after pregancy
Tuesday April 24, 2007
"Whale Rider" actress Keisha Castle-Hughes said she felt she had to hide away after a public controversy erupted over her teenage pregnancy.
Castle-Hughes, who won a best actress Oscar nomination in 2004 for her starring role in the New Zealand film, was 16 when she became pregnant last year.
"It hurt at the time because it's supposed to be a huge celebration. I was supposed to be able to go, 'Wow, I'm having a baby and this is amazing,'" she told Television New Zealand.
"I felt like that I had to hide. I felt like it was bad for me to be happy about it."
Castle-Hughes said she was shocked when she found out she was pregnant to 19-year-old boyfriend Bradley Hull but now felt ready to have a child.
"If it wasn't meant to happen now, it wouldn't have happened now," the 17-year-old said.
She said life in the spotlight after her Oscar nod almost made her give up acting.
"It was like a circus and it scared me. I was only 13 and it scared me," she said. "I said after the Oscars, I can't do this job because I hate this part so much."
She later changed her mind and acted in "Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith" and shortly before becoming pregnant she played Mary, the mother of Jesus, in
"The Nativity Story".
"It was weird because I'd been playing this pregnant woman for three months."
She wondered at times if she was imagining the pregnancy because she got so caught up in the role.
When the news of her pregnancy got out, Castle-Hughes was dogged by photographers hiding in bushes outside her Auckland house, wanting to capture the first photo of her "bump".
"I felt scared in my own home and it was horrible. I should be entitled to walk around my front yard without worrying that these people are watching me."
Other unfriendly attention came two years ago at a Pacific cultural festival in Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, when a group of girls knocked her to the ground and kicked her.
"It was just a bunch of girls who decided they didn't like Keisha Castle-Hughes," she said.
AFP
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