Denzel Washington is recalling his reaction to losing the best actor Oscar to Kevin Spacey in 2000.
The Gladiator II actor, who had already won one Oscar and scored three other nominations before that year’s ceremony, received another nomination for his role as Rubin Carter in 1999’s The Hurricane. He was up against Spacey for American Beauty, Russell Crowe for The Insider, Richard Farnsworth for The Straight Story and Sean Penn for Sweet and Lowdown, however, the Academy Award ultimately went to Spacey (Washington won the Golden Globe for best actor in a motion picture drama that year).
“At the Oscars, they called Kevin Spacey’s name for American Beauty,” he recalled to Esquire magazine. “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 continued of his reaction, “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. And you know, there was talk in the town about what was going on over there on that side of the street, and that’s between him and God. I ain’t got nothing to do with that. I pray for him. That’s between him and his maker.”
The actor previously won the Oscar for best supporting actor for 1990’s Glory, however, The Hurricane was Washington’s second time scoring a best actor nom as he previously was nominated for 1993’s Malcolm X but lost to Al Pacino for Scent of a Woman that year.
“I went through a time then when [my wife] Pauletta [Washington] 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,’” he told the magazine. “You vote. You watch them. I ain’t watching that. I gave up. I got bitter. My pity party. So I’ll tell you, for about fifteen years, from 1999 to 2014 when I put the beverage down, I was bitter.”
Two years later, Washington finally won the Academy Award for best actor for his role as Alonzo in 2001’s Training Day. And he had since earned four additional best leading actor Oscar nominations.