Trent Reznor considered disbanding Nine Inch Nails after winning an Academy Award.
Trent Reznor
The 53-year-old musician revealed that winning an Oscar in 2011 for Best Original Score on the David Fincher film 'The Social Network' was an achievement that caused him to briefly rethink his career as a rockstar.
The 'Terrible Lie' hitmaker told Variety magazine: "There's nowhere to go but down from there, right? And you start to wonder - should it be 'F**k rock and roll!'
"I've got a new lease on life that doesn't have quite the age limit restrictions that playing in a rock band does? Should I put all my eggs in that basket?
"Because one thing about us is, as great as winning an Oscar is, the next day by lunchtime, we were back to being the same not-good-enough assholes that we were before we'd won one.
"It felt good for maybe 18 hours. It was a great experience and I have a lot of respect for the institution, but it didn't fix everything that's wrong with our brains, and our inadequacies remained."
Trent also recalled that the win caused him and his band to contemplate whether they wanted to score more films and broaden their careers or just stick to rock music.
He mused: "It caused us to kind of think about, if we do take on more roles of scoring, are we trying to be completists? Are we trying to tick every box, to want to be able to do everything from a complicated orchestral score to a rom-com? Do we want to be journeymen, or jacks of all styles and techniques?"
Trent won the award with Atticus Ross, and the pair have since worked together on other scores, including Jonah Hill's new film 'Mid90s.'
They also composed the soundtrack for 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo' - which earned them a Grammy in 2013.
Tagged in David Fincher Trent Reznor