Arquette "knew there would be haters" after Oscar speech

When Patricia Arquette gave her passionate Oscar acceptance speech advocating for gender wage equality, she said was so terrified she didn't see Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lopez's applauding reactions.

"I knew I had to say it, but I knew there would be haters," Arquette said Tuesday on "CBS This Morning" about her speech. "I knew people wouldn't understand what I was talking about. And certainly I'm privileged, and I'm winning an award. I'm a very successful actress, but I wasn't always a successful actress."

After receiving the best supporting actress award for her role in "Boyhood," Arquette ended her speech by saying, "It's our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America."

"I was a mother at 20, I couldn't buy diapers and food. I lived in poverty when I was little. There were times when I didn't have a pair of shoes to wear," Arquette said. "So I have a lot of empathy for other people and I feel like if I am fortunate enough to have success -- all of these women have been crying out. Nobody's been listening to them."

According to Arquette, to be a good actor, one has to "really want to understand human beings," something she reflected on while playing Olivia Evans.

"I won that Oscar playing a part of a single mom who struggled, had to move her kids multiple times, send herself back to school, and I thought how different her life would have been if she'd been making a dollar for every dollar that she earned," Arquette said.

Wage equality is an issue Arquette said women have been talking about and working on for decades.

"Women who are my age, they've already spent a good portion of their earning life losing out on this. We have a different demographic now. We have women as heads of households," Arquette said. "We aren't living this 'Ozzie and Harriet' world where the male is the provider anymore. So we have to change with the times. And women can't wait anymore. We have 42 million women in poverty and there are 24 million children."

In addition to being vocal for these issues, Arquette is now tackling a new role as the first female lead in CSI. The Oscar winner plays agent Avery Ryan of the FBI's Cyber Crime Division in "CSI: Cyber."

"It's a very different character for me," Arquette said. "It's a real challenge because I'm not tech savvy and my character is very brain-based. Her technology skills, her profiling of people -- I usually play characters that are very emotional, so it's been a bit challenging for me."

Arquette met with Mary Aiken, the cyberpsychologist on whom her character is based.

"She's done work with Interpol. Her back story is very different than my character, but her skill set is incredible and she goes through every script and works with our writers," Arquette said.

It's an exciting and incredible time in her life, she said.

"At 46 years old, to have all these things happening I didn't imagine," Arquette said. "At 46, usually they want to throw you off to pasture."