Denzel Washington Says He Was 'Bitter' Over Kevin Spacey ...
November 20, 2024 @ 12:51 PM
Denzel Washington wasn’t too pleased to lose the Best Actor Oscar to “American Beauty” star Kevin Spacey — so much so, in fact, that he felt bitterness over his “Hurricane” loss for years to come.
The actor (who later won the top Oscar for “Training Day”) revealed in an interview with Esquire published Tuesday that the resentment of the situation lasted “for about 15 years.”
The topic arose mid-interview while discussing his filmography. That’s when he recalled the night he lost to Spacey at the 2000 Academy Awards.
“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,” Washington explained. “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 went on to say that the loss led him to drink later that night.
“I don’t want to sound like, ‘Oh, he won my Oscar,’ or anything like that. It wasn’t like that,” Washington said while reflecting on the resentment that had grown in his heart.
“I went through a time then when 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 continued. “So I’ll tell you, for about 15 years, from 1999 to 2014 when I put the beverage down, I was bitter. I don’t even know offhand what movies I made then — I guess ‘John Q,’ ‘Manchurian Candidate. But I didn’t know I was bitter.”
While Washington didn’t take home an Oscar for the film, he did nab an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture, as well as the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama. Along with Spacey for Best Actor, Washington was also up against Russell Crowe for “The Insider,” Sean Penn for “Sweet and Lowdown” and Richard Farnsworth for “The Straight Story.”
