Denzel Washington revealed that he was admittedly “bitter” when he lost an Oscar for Best Actor to Kevin Spacey in 2000.
The actor reflected on his reaction to the loss with Esquire. He won for Best Supporting Actor in 1990 with Glory, and was nominated for his performance as Malcolm X in 1993. However, when he lost to Spacey for American Beauty — Washington was up for his portrayal of Rubin Carter in The Hurricane — he was upset and led him to have his wife, Pauletta, vote in his place.
“At the Oscars, they called Kevin Spacey’s name for ‘American Beauty.’ I have a memory of turning around and looking at him, and nobody was standing but the people around him. And everyone else was looking at me. Not that it was this way. Maybe that’s the way I perceived it. Maybe I felt like everybody was looking at me. Because why would everybody be looking at me? Thinking about it now, I don’t think they were,” Washington, 69, shared.
He continued, “I’m sure I went home and drank that night. I had to. I don’t want to sound like, ‘Oh, he won my Oscar,’ or anything like that. It wasn’t like that […] I went through a time then when [my wife] Pauletta would watch all the Oscar movies — I told her, I don’t care about that. Hey: ‘They don’t care about me? I don’t care.’ You vote. You watch them. I ain’t watching that. I gave up. I got bitter. My pity party.”
Washington’s Best Actor win finally came in 2002 for Training Day. He became the second Black man to garner a win in that category following Sidney Poitier’s historic win in 1963.
He hasn’t won an Oscar since, but is back in the race with his riveting performance in Gladiator II.
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