Denzel Washington 'not interested' in winning another Oscar
The 70-year-old Hollywood actor has received 10 Academy Award nominations over the years and he's won twice - taking home the Best Supporting Actor prize for 1989 drama Glory and then claiming Best Actor Oscar for 2001's Training Day - but Denzel has confessed he's not striving to win another.
Speaking on Jake's Takes, Denzel explained: "I don't do it [make movies] for Oscars. I really don't care about that kind of stuff.
"I've been at this a long time, and there's times when I've won, shouldn't have won, didn't win, should have won.
"Man gives the award, God gives the award. I'm not that interested in Oscars. People say: 'Well, where do you keep it?' I say: 'Next to the other one'."
He went on to add: "I'm not bragging. I'm just telling you how I feel about it. On my last day, it ain't going to do me a bit of good."
Host Jake Hamilton then said: "I don't think God ever asks: 'How many Oscars do you have?' and Denzel replied: "He might go: 'You know, that's why I gave you an extra week'. As long as He says: 'Now, get on up here', I'm alright."
Denzel was last nominated for an Oscar at the 2021 ceremony for his role in The Tragedy of Macbeth, but he lost out on the Best Actor gong to Will Smith, who won for his tennis drama King Richard.
The movie star previously admitted he felt "bitter" after losing out on two Best Actor Oscars and stopped voting for the Academy Awards as he indulged in a "pity party".
After winning for Glory in the Best Supporting Actor category, Denzel went on to miss out on the Best Actor prize for Malcolm X when he was pitched against Scent of a Woman star Al Pacino in 1993 and he lost again in 2000 when he was nominated for Hurricane and the top gong went to Kevin Spacey for American Beauty - and Denzel said it was a tough loss.
He told Esquire magazine: "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. 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."
Denzel began to resent the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and he got his wife to vote for the winners instead.
He added: "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."
However, he then made a huge comeback just two years later when he won the coveted Best Actor Oscar for Training Day and he has since received four more nominations for Flight, Fences, Roman J. Israel, Esq. and The Tragedy of Macbeth.
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