Denzel Washington says he doesn’t care about the Oscars anymore because it won’t “do me a bit of good”.
Speaking during the press tour for his new film, Highest 2 Lowest, the veteran actor talked about how he didn’t give too much importance to the Oscars and made no decisions based on what would win him one.
“I don’t do it for Oscars. I don’t care about that kind of stuff,” Washington told Jake Hamilton on Jake’s Takes.
“I’ve been at this a long time, and there’s time when I won and shouldn’t have won and then didn’t win and should’ve won. Man gives the award. God gives the reward.”
Washington, 70, has been nominated for 10 Oscars and won two in his nearly five-decade career. He won Best Supporting Actor for his role in Glory in 1990 and Best Actor for Training Day in 2002.
“I’m not that interested in Oscars,” the actor continued. “People ask me, ‘Where do I keep it?’ Well, next to the other one. I’m not bragging! Just telling you how I feel about it. On my last day, [Oscars] aren’t going to do me a bit of good.”
Hamilton quipped: “I don’t think God ever asks, ‘How many Oscars do you have?’”
“He might go, ‘That’s why I gave you an extra week.’ [As] long as he says, ‘Now, get on up here,’ I’m alright,” the Equalizer star said.
Washington previously spoke about feeling “bitter” after losing the Oscar to Kevin Spacey in 2000. He had been nominated for his performance as Rubin Carter, a former middleweight boxer wrongly convicted of a triple murder, in The Hurricane.
“At the Oscars, they called Kevin Spacey’s name for American Beauty,” Washington told Esquire in 2024.
“I’m sure I went home and drank that night. I had to,” he said. “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.”
This year, Washington was widely considered to have been snubbed by the Academy for his performance as Macrinus in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II.
“I was sitting there smiling, going: Look at you. On the day you didn’t get a nomination for an Oscar, you’re working on Othello on Broadway. Are you kidding me?” Washington told the New York Times when asked how he felt about not being nominated.
“Awww. Oh, I’m so upset,” he then joked. “Listen, I’ve been around too long. I’m getting wiser, working on talking less and learning to understand more – and that’s exciting.”
In Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest, a modern reimagining of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 classic High and Low, Washington stars as music mogul David King who is caught up in an elaborate ransom plot by wannabe rapper Yung Felon, played by ASAP Rocky.
The Independent’s Geoffrey Macnab gave the film two stars and described it as “ultimately Washington’s show”.
“He remains as magnetic as ever,” he wrote, “switching in a second from affability to menace, demanding respect from his sons and colleagues alike, and trying to keep multiple plates spinning at once as both his business and private lives go off the rails.”
Highest 2 Lowest premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. It will be available for streaming on Apple TV+ from 5 September.
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