Six actors,one room ...

NICOLE KIDMAN, we learned, stuttered as a child.

James Franco doesn’t care if you know he sleeps in class. “If there weren’t cameras here,” says Natalie Portman, “this could be really therapeutic.” It kind of was. Our Oscar Roundtable is always a little like Inception — it really gets into an actor’s head. But this year’s was so full of pain, relief, humiliation, love, and other drugs of the profession, you wonder: who would want a trophy life?

All your performances are high-risk, for different reasons. Annette, you are in a relationship with Julianne Moore’s character.