Just for reference, here are the five BEST ACTOR nominees of the 72nd Oscars:
Denzel Washington (The Hurricane)
Kevin Spacey (American Beauty)
Russell Crowe (The Insider)
Sean Penn (Sweet and Lowdown)
Richard Farnsworth (The Straight Story)
Not a bad performance in the bunch, and if it were up to me, I’d probably have given it to Russell Crowe. With that said, Kevin Spacey won that year, and he was the frontrunner for a few months leading up to the ceremony. Denzel Washington was the spoiler, and had the momentum going for him since he’d just won the Golden Globe.
Washington is now telling Esquire that he got “bitter” after losing the best actor Oscar to Spacey. Washington had already won a supporting actor statuette for 1989’s “Glory” by that time, and a three-time Oscar nominee, but he wanted his badly wanted his lead actor statuette (which he would eventually nab two years later for “Training Day”).
“At the Oscars, they called Kevin Spacey’s name for ‘American Beauty,'” Washington tells Esquire. “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.”
“I’m sure I went home and drank that night. I had to,” Washington said about his reaction to Spacey winning. “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.”
That’s right, whatever sins Spacey might have done are between him and God. Washington throwing some shade at Spacey is amusing. He also backhandedly confirms what we already knew — that the industry was very much aware of Spacey’s misdeeds but decided to turn a blind eye and reward him anyways.
With that said, I don’t believe Washington losing to Spacey was a crime — both were brilliant in their respective films. I’d call it more of a “crime” that Washington lost, for his remarkable turn in Spike Lee’s “Malcom X,” to Al “Hoo-Ha” Pacino for “Scent of a Woman.” That’s still one of the most inexcusable oversights in Oscar history.
Regardless, Washington goes on to tell Esquire that after losing best actor for a second time, he grew bitter and had his wife, Paulette, start voting in his place for Oscars.
“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,” Washington said. “You vote. You watch them. I ain’t watching that. I gave up. I got bitter. My pity party.”
How odd that he came to the conclusion that they “don’t care” about him. He had already won his supporting actor Oscar by that point, and was one of the very few acting heavyweights who commanded a $20M per movie salary. Hell, he’s been Oscar-nominated a whopping nine times. He was well-loved, and still is.
Oh, and don’t be surprised if Denzel earns his 10th Oscar nod next year for his stellar turn in Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator II” — he’s currently #3 in the supporting actor category on the Gold Derby charts. It’s inevitably going to happen.