Why Denzel Washington Doesn't Care About Winning Oscars

For well over 40 years, Denzel Washington has been dazzling audiences with one superb performance after another. (He was the goods from the start, even when he was paying his dues in the remarkably wrong-headed "Carbon Copy.") He's clearly one of our greatest living actors, and he appears to be having the time of his life mixing up his commercial efforts with serious artistic pursuits. And he gets infinity cool points by insisting on staying on the "Late Show with David Letterman" couch so he could get roasted by Don Rickles.

There have been disappointments along the way, some of them profound (like Columbia Pictures fumbling the launch of Washington's Easy Rawlins franchise). For me, there are few Hollywood sins less forgivable than the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences giving Al Pacino the Best Actor Oscar for Martin Brest's "Scent of a Woman" the same year that Washington gave one of the greatest film performances ever in Spike Lee's "Malcolm X." Everyone knew the Academy was atoning for inexplicably giving Art Carney Best Actor for Paul Mazursky's "Harry and Tonto" over Pacino's majestic work in "The Godfather Part II" (also one of the greatest film performances ever), but that doesn't make me feel any better about the injustice.

How does Washington feel about this grave error in judgment 32 years later? Just peachy, actually!

In an interview on Jake's Takes timed to the barely promoted theatrical release of "Highest 2 Lowest" (Spike Lee's new adaptation of Evan Hunter's "King's Ransom," which was previously the basis for Akira Kurosawa's masterful thriller "High and Low"), Washington was asked how it felt to have previously been nominated for 10 Oscars and won both Best Supporting Actor for Ed Zwick's "Glory" and Best Actor for Antoine Fuqua's "Training Day." The star's response? "I'm not that interested in Oscars."

Washington views his awards success from a spiritual perspective. "I don't care about that kind of stuff," he explained. "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." This is an interesting answer. A lot of people (myself included) felt Washington's "Training Day" Oscar should've gone to Tom Wilkinson for his devastating performance in Todd Field's "In the Bedroom." Perhaps Washington agrees!

Washington added, "I'm just not that interested in Oscars. 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." When the interviewer expressed doubt that God cares about Oscars, Washington laughed and replied, "[God] might go, 'That's why I gave you an extra week.' [As] long as he says, 'Now, get on up here,' I'm alright."

I hope there's a heaven for all the obvious reasons, but I imagine it's a place where everything is possible, which means I'd finally get to interview Washington. And watch Rickles give him the business.

"Highest 2 Lowest" opens in theaters on August 15, 2025, before streaming on Apple TV+ a few weeks later on September 5.