Denzel Washington Once Shared Why He Didn’t Keep His Oscar in His House
The Academy Awards has nominated and rewarded Denzel Washington quite a few times due to his highly acclaimed performances. After winning his first award, however, he was very tight-lipped about where he put the statue.
Denzel Washington once reflected on what it was like winning an Oscar
Washington famously took home an Academy Award for the first time after his performance in 1989’s Glory. He won for Best Supporting Actor back then, which had been a dream of his since he was working in theater.
“Every young actor wants to win an Oscar,” Washington once said in an interview with Oprah. “Years ago I was in a parking lot across the street from Spago, and I could see the stars with their Oscars going into the after party. I said to myself, ‘I want to do that one day.’ When I was at Fordham, I recall looking at Avery Fisher Hall and the New York State Theater and saying, ‘I’m going to work in those theaters.’ I’ve had those dreams.”
When he won for the first time, however, Washington still wondered if he was dreaming.
“Kevin Kline was in the wings. He’d won the year before [1988] for A Fish Called Wanda. After I got the Oscar and walked offstage, I said to Kevin, ‘Did that just happen?’ It felt like I fell asleep in the mail room and I was going to wake up and find out it was all a dream,” he said.
But Washington once quipped that he wouldn’t keep his awards on display the way other actors might.
“I don’t want anybody come robbing my house now,” he once told Interview.
Denzel Washington told Ethan Hawke it was a good thing he didn’t win for ‘Training Day’
Washington would win another Oscar several years later for his Training Day performance. The second time saw him taking home the prize for Best Actor. That same year, his co-star Ethan Hawke was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. But he lost to Jim Broadbent. On Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace, Hawke shared how Washington lifted his mood after his loss.
“’It’s better that you didn’t win. Losing was better,’” Hawke remembered Washington telling him. “’You don’t want an award to improve your status. You want to improve the award’s status.’ That’s the way he thinks. That’s what I’m talking about playing with Babe Ruth. The Academy Award has more power, because Denzel has a couple. It didn’t elevate who he was.”
Washington also wondered if his win also helped pave the way for other African American actors to win the prize. Sydney Poitier was the only Black actor who’d won the award for Best Actor before him. After Washington, only Forest Whitaker, Jamie Foxx, and recently Will Smith have won the coveted prize. In an interview with The Guardian, Washington seemed unsure if his victory made the Academy pay more attention to other African American actors. But it was an idea he considered.
“You don’t get nominated unless you have a great role to play and you interpret the role well. So maybe it shifted voters’ attention to what certain African-Americans were doing. What Jamie Foxx did in Ray was phenomenal, it couldn’t be denied. I think Forest winning was a bit more of a surprise. Jamie was almost a phenomenon – he was Ray. The fact that I’d won a couple of years earlier, maybe that did help for white voters to say: ‘Hey, look at Jamie Foxx over here,’ when they may not have prior to that. I don’t know. But maybe… maybe,” Washington said.
