Denzel Washington reached for the bottle after shedding out on the Academy Award for Finest Actor to Kevin Spacey in 2000.
The “Gladiator II” star, 69, who had already gained an Oscar in 1989, obtained his fourth nomination for his function as Rubin Carter within the 1999 movie, “The Hurricane.”
However along with Spacey — who was nominated for “American Beauty,” Washington was up towards Russell Crowe for “The Insider,” Richard Farnsworth for “The Straight Story” and Sean Penn for “Sweet and Lowdown.”
Spacey in the end emerged victorious and earned his second Academy Award.
“At the Oscars, they called Kevin Spacey’s name for ‘American Beauty,’” Washington instructed Esquire Journal.
“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,” he added.
Washington mentioned he “went home and drank that night.”
“I had to,” he mentioned. “I don’t want to sound like, ‘Oh, he won my Oscar,’ or anything like that. It wasn’t like that.”
“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,” he added.
Washington, who has obtained a complete of 10 Oscar nominations in his profession up to now, has gained a complete of two Academy Awards.
After profitable the Oscar for finest supporting actor for 1990’s “Glory,” Washington went on to choose up his second gong in 2002 for “Training Day.”
“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 mentioned.
“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.”
Elsewhere within the interview, the actor opened up about his previous drug and alcohol use, admitting he’s “done a lot of damage” to his physique.
Washington, who has been sober for nearly 10 years, mentioned his unhealthy habits began with wine.
“Wine is very tricky. It’s very slow. It ain’t like, boom, all of a sudden,” he instructed the outlet. “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.”
“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 mentioned he usually splurged hundreds of {dollars} of premium wine bottles that he stashed in his wine cellar at house.
