Anna Kendrick’s award show secret: ‘I was tripping balls’

THE Pitch Perfect star reveals the time she walked an award show red carpet fresh from surgery still high as a kite — and we’ve dug up the pictures.

Kendrick at a recent award show, this time not high. Picture; Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

PITCH Perfect star Anna Kendrick has confessed there was one awards show where it really was an honour just to be nominated — because she was too “high off her face” to accept the award.

Kendrick makes the hilarious admission in her newly-released memoir, Scrappy Little Nobody, detailing an appearance at the 2008 Independent Spirit Awards, considered the Oscars of independent cinema.

Kendrick was nominated for Best Supporting Female for her role in the 2007 comedy / drama Rocket Science — a huge early accolade for the then-rising star, coming several years before her Oscar-nominated breakout role in Up In The Air.

Kendrick scored praise for her early role in the film Rocket Science.

However, disaster struck the afternoon before the show, when Kendrick became aware of a tingling sensation in her face, behind her nose. There was a swelling in her face, putting pressure on her lips and making it near-impossible to even smile.

By the morning of the Independent Spirit Awards, things had gotten even worse. A trip to the emergency room determined that Kendrick had a cyst inside her nose, a relatively minor ailment made serious due to its unfortunate position.

Lancing the cyst was incredibly painful, and so Kendrick found herself laying in a hospital bed, hooked to a drip delivering a steady flow of painkillers, with the award show kicking off across town 90 minutes later. Determined not to miss her big moment, she discharged herself still “high as f**k” and raced home to change.

At the 2008 Independent Spirit Awards — pictured here some 45 minutes after leaving a hospital bed. Picture: Splash News

“The next thing I remember is being pushed onto the carpet and hearing photographers shout, ‘Smile! Over here! Smile! What’s her name? Smile! Sweetie, how do you spell your name? Smile!’”

She was “force-fed” bread and water by her film’s director, Jeff Blitz, in an attempt to sober her up.

When it came to her category, Kendrick was beaten to the award by our own Cate Blanchett.

Seated next to her, Blitz jokingly whispered that he demanded a recount.

She slowly turned to face him and uttered three simple words: “I’m tripping balls.”

“I stared at him for about 20 solid seconds, then turned back to the stage,” she writes.

Here’s Kendrick in all her zonked-out, post-operative glory at the awards:

That may be blood on her shoes, we’re not sure. Picture: Frazer Harrison/Getty

Scrappy Little Nobody is out now through Simon & Schuster Australia.

Plenty more Hollywood anecdotes in Kendrick’s new book.

Originally published as Anna Kendrick’s award show secret: ‘I was tripping balls’