Denzel Washington reached for the bottle after missing out on the Academy Award for Best Actor to Kevin Spacey in 2000. The “Gladiator II” star, then 69, had already won an Oscar in 1989 and received his fourth nomination for his role as Rubin Carter in the 1999 film, “The Hurricane.” However, in addition to Spacey, who was nominated for “American Beauty,” Washington was also up against Russell Crowe for “The Insider,” Richard Farnsworth for “The Straight Story,” and Sean Penn for “Sweet and Lowdown.” Spacey ultimately won his second Academy Award.
“At the Oscars, they called Kevin Spacey’s name for ‘American Beauty,’” Washington told Esquire Magazine. “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.” He added, “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.”
Washington admitted, “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.” He also mentioned, “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.”
Washington, who has received a total of 10 Oscar nominations in his career so far, has won a total of two Academy Awards. After winning the Oscar for best supporting actor for 1990’s “Glory,” he went on to pick up his second gong in 2002 for “Training Day.” He shared, “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.’” He continued, “You vote. You watch them. I ain’t watching that. I gave up. I got bitter. My pity party. So I’ll tell you, for about fifteen years, from 1999 to 2014 when I put the beverage down, I was bitter.”
In the interview, Washington also opened up about his past drug and alcohol use, admitting he’s “done a lot of damage” to his body. He said, “Wine is very tricky. It’s very slow. It ain’t like, boom, all of a sudden. I never got strung out on heroin. Never got strung out on coke. Never got strung out on hard drugs. I shot dope just like they shot dope, but I never got strung out.” He added, “And I never got strung out on liquor. I had this ideal idea of wine tastings and all that — which is what it was at first. And that’s a very subtle thing. I mean, I drank the best.” Washington said he often splurged thousands of dollars on premium wine bottles that he stashed in his wine cellar at home.
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