Oscars: The Star Who Gave Up Films For God

The Reverend Mother Dolores Hart is the world's only Oscars voting nun.

She's 76 years old and presides over the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis in Connecticut.

But her membership of the film industry's most influential body isn't as inexplicable as you might think.

As a young woman, Dolores Hart was a Hollywood starlet who made 11 films to great acclaim, including Loving You in 1957, which included an on-screen kiss with none other than Elvis Presley.

During an interview in the serene surroundings of her Abbey's chapel, she told Sky News: "As we started, the director said 'Cut!' and he said to the director, 'Wally, would you please put some powder on her ears, she's blushing!'"

The filming was stopped just a few minutes later, she admitted, when Elvis suffered from the same problem.

Dolores had been dubbed the next Grace Kelly, but, she said: "God asked me another question: would I like to become a nun?"

Her reply?

"No! No, I wanted no part of it. But he has his way of getting us to understand that to do what he wants us to do can often complete everything you want to be."

And so a life of faith and service began.

But the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences wanted her to stay involved, in recent years inviting her to become a voting member.

The 2015 choices are proving problematic.

"Now I don't say this is what I am going to vote for because I can't say that and anyway I don't know myself.

"I'm struggling between a number of things, and one is of course The Theory of Everything, which was brilliantly done."

She expressed admiration for British actor Eddie Redmayne and Julianne Moore, both nominated in best actor and actress categories, and concern for the lack of other nominations for Selma, which is up for best film and song but nothing else.

Dolores rejects the criticisms levelled at the Oscars voting process - that it should be more transparent and that perhaps members of the public should be involved, rather than just a select group of ageing insiders.

She said: "I don't think that person who has no experience of the craft or the art should try to vote.

"Somebody who votes only on an emotional value because they happen to like Johnny Jump-Up, that's not voting for the real thing."

But as a nun, does she have reservations about watching and voting for films which often depict sex, violence, abuse, war, and criminal acts?

"No, not at all, because these things tell the public probably in a more intense, emotional, direct way what the price is that you pay from buying in to this system.

"It shows the difference, what could be, if we did not have war, if we did not hate one another."