Amanda Posey: I didn't win, but my only regret is that I didn't meet George Clooney

I'm lying in bed at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, in Los Angeles – the Pretty Woman hotel. Considering it's the day after the Oscars, I'm not quite as much the worse for wear as I thought I would be.

My husband, Nick [Hornby], and I got back to the hotel at about three o'clock in the morning – we turned back at the last minute from Madonna's party in the Hollywood Hills. Instead, we had a drink on the hotel balcony, with my co-producer Finola [Dwyer] and reflected on the fact that our involvement with the film was truly over.

The Oscars was an amazing night for us, because we went into it not expecting to win a thing. The star of our film, Carey Mulligan, who was nominated for best actress, was positive that Sandra Bullock was going to win all along. And anyway, it's not that bad to be a loser along with Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren. She also felt like a big star up on stage when she presented two awards with Avatar's Zoe Saldana.

So it was a surprise after the Oscars when we turned up to the Vanity Fair party and everyone was commiserating with us. The idea that we would be disappointed was out of the question.

The day began at about 2pm, with the journey to the ceremony – it's a slow approach with so many limos going to the same place, and with such a heavily armed police barricade to get through. Then it took us about an hour and a half to get down the red carpet. I passed Precious actress Mo'Nique, who later won Best Actress in a Supporting Role, but the big A-list stars tend to wait until the end to go down the red carpet, so the atmosphere wasn't too mad. The only disappointment was that I never got to meet George Clooney, which was my Oscars mission.

We knew An Education was not going to win Best Picture in a million years, so there was no tension as the show began. Our old friend Colin Firth, who had starred in the film of Nick's book Fever Pitch, introduced our film and they showed a clip. We want a copy of the montage they used as it was so great. It is a special moment seeing your movie held up in front of bigger movies. The whole show felt like a terrible rush; I don't know if they were short of time this year.

By the time we headed to the Governor's Ball, we were starving. We chatted to the whole team who made Up, which won Best Animated Feature Film, because we had got to know them since seeing them repeatedly on the awards circuit.

We set off from there in quite good time because we heard the Vanity Fair party got quite busy. Outside the party we got interviewed on the BBC live and then friends started sending us texts because they had seen us on breakfast television.

Inside the party it is a real squash and then you see somebody really famous close up, which feels odd because you are used to seeing them from a distance. I bumped into Alec Baldwin, Rachel McAdams, Ryan Reynolds, The Hurt Locker's Guy Pearce. But Nick and I had been most star-struck at the Sony party the night before, when we talked to Meryl Streep, a heroine of ours!

Now it's all over. The only thing left is to give the jewels back to Boucheron. And I just got a text asking if they could send security to our hotel room.

'An Education' is out on DVD and Blu-ray. Amanda Posey was talking to Charlotte Cripps