Jackson won three awards that year for his final installment in the 'Lord of the Rings' movie trilogy

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• Peter Jackson shared a story about his son’s emotional reaction at the 2004 Oscars while speaking at an event at the Cannes Film Festival
• Jackson won three awards that year for his final installment in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy
• The director said his son was “really invested” when it came to the award for Best Picture, which was presented by Steven Spielberg

Peter Jackson's son Billy is his biggest supporter. 

The New Zealand filmmaker, 64, shared a story about his son's emotional reaction at the 2004 Oscars while speaking at an event at the Cannes Film Festival on May 13.

Jackson won three awards — Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay — that year for his final installment in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. The epic, overall, won all 11 awards it was nominated for.

Looking back on the monumental night, he said, "It's funny because my son Billy, who's actually here somewhere, I think he was about six or seven years old when the Oscars happened and he was in New Zealand watching it on TV."

Jackson said Billy was “really invested” when it came to the award for Best Picture, which was presented by Steven Spielberg. 

“Steven looks at the envelope and he says, ‘It's a clean sweep.' And Billy thought the winner was a movie called 'Clean Sweep' and he burst into tears,” he said. 

Jackson later shared the story with the Jaws director.

“I told Spielberg that afterwards and he was really, really, really ashamed of himself. He said, ‘Oh no, I can't believe I made your son cry,' " he recalled.

The filmmaker also noted that each of his three Lord of the Rings movies won Oscars. 

“But there was just a feeling, the zeitgeist was that probably there'd be a big Oscar haul in the third film, that Oscar voters were holding their vote back until number three. And it was right. I mean that's what really happened,” he said. 

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Jackson shares son Billy Jackson, 31, and daughter Katie Jackson, 30, with his wife, Fran Walsh. The couple have been married since 1987.

Walsh is a screenwriter and producer, and she co-wrote all of The Lord of the Rings movies. Making the series even more of a family affair, Billy and Katie appeared in small roles in the three movies.

At the Cannes Film Festival, Jackson received an honorary Palme d'Or from Elijah Wood, who portrayed Frodo Baggins in the trilogy. The actor recalled meeting Jackson after sending in an audition video while presenting Jackson with the award.

“He had seen a VHS tape I'd made with friends in the woods of Griffith Park, and now they wanted to meet the young man who had sent it. And when a little while later the call came that I was going to be Frodo Baggins, I sat down on the floor of my bedroom and I understood with the whole of my being my life had just been divided into before and after,” he said, per Variety. 

“I know I'm far from the only person who has had their life changed by Peter Jackson,” Wood continued. 

Jackson also directed the three Hobbit movies and produced the 2024 animated movie The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. He will next produce the upcoming installments, The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past and The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.

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