Two years later, Hunt co-starred as Billy Kwan in "The Year of Living Dangerously", Peter Weir's film adaptation of the novel of the same name. For her work in this film, Hunt won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1983, becoming the first person to win an Oscar for playing a character of the opposite sex. In her screen test, Hunt wore a hairpiece, a fake moustache, and "paste-on pieces above her eyes to Asian." To play the role, Hunt had her hair dyed and cut short, had her eyebrows shaved, wore padding and makeup, and wore something in her shirt pocket. In her 1986 interview with the "Bomb" magazine, Hunt remarked that Billy Kwan "is supra-personal [with layers of sexual ambiguity[.]"