Denzel Washington is a Hollywood legend. With a resume that rivals some of the industry’s most established stars, the actor is widely respected for his talent and approach to life. However, there was a difference between what he showed fans and what he kept in his private life, with the actor recently opening up about his struggles with alcohol and the dark place he fell into after a loss at the Academy Awards.
Denzel Washington lost out to Kevin Spacey
In a recent interview with Esquire, Denzel Washington revealed the awards show loss that had the most impact on him. It all took place at the 72nd Academy Awards in 2000. By this time, Washington had already thrice been nominated for an Academy Award and had taken one home.
This time around, he was nominated for Best Actor for his portrayal of Rubin “The Hurricane” Carter in The Hurricane (1999). He was up against Kevin Spacey, Sean Penn, Russell Crowe and Richard Farnsworth, with the former nominated for his role in American Beauty (1999).
“At the Oscars, they called Kevin Spacey’s name for American Beauty,” Washington recalled. “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,” he continued. “Maybe that’s the way I perceived it. Maybe I felt like everyone was looking at me. Because why would everybody be looking at me? Thinking about it now, I don’t think they were.”
‘I gave up. I got bitter’
As aforementioned, the loss majorly impacted Denzel Washington, who shared it sent him into a dark place. “I’m sure I went home and drank that night. I had to,” he revealed. “I don’t want to sound like, Oh, he won my Oscar, or anything like that. It wasn’t like that.”
Washington shared that he found himself getting bitter and essentially giving up on the Academy Awards. “I went through a time when Pauletta [Washington] would watch all the Oscar movies – I told her, I don’t care about that,” he said. “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,” he went on to say. “So I’ll tell you, for about fifteen years, from 1999 to 2014 when I put the beverage down, I was bitter. I don’t even know offhand what movies I made then – I guess John Q, Manchurian Candidate. But I didn’t know I was bitter.”
Denzel Washington opens up about his struggles with alcohol
It was just before this, in 1999, that Denzel Washington began to struggle with alcohol abuse, with him admitting to Esquire that he even built a wine cellar in his house to try and hide his habit.
“Wine was my thing, and now I was popping $4,000 bottles just because that’s what was left,” he shared. “And then later in those years I’d call Gil Turner’s Fine Wines & Spirits on Sunset Boulevard and say, Send me two bottles, the best of this or that. And my wife’s saying, Why do you keep ordering just two? I said, Because if I order more, I’ll drink more. So I kept it to two bottles, and I would drink them over the course of the day.”
Washington explained that he never drank while working on a project, saying he “would clean up, go back to work,” then begin drinking again as soon as the project wrapped up.
By the time he filmed 2012’s Flight, in which he portrays an alcoholic airline pilot, the actor revealed he was nearing the end of his alcohol binges. “I wasn’t drinking when we filmed Flight, I know that, but I’m sure I did as soon as I finished,” he explained. “That was getting toward the end of the drinking, but I knew a lot about waking up and looking around, not knowing what happened.”
He added, “I know during Flight I was thinking about those who had been through addiction, and I wanted good to come out of that. It wasn’t like it was therapeutic. Actually, maybe it was therapeutic!”
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Washington went on to reveal that he’ll be 10 years’ clean this coming December. “I stopped at sixty and I haven’t hard a thimbles worth since,” he shared. “Thing are opening up for me now – like being seventy. It’s real. And it’s okay. This is my last chapter – if I get another thirty, what do I want to do?”