The two-time Academy Award winner Denzel Washington is one of the most acclaimed actors of all time, but one Oscar loss feels particularly egregious more than three decades later. As a rare kind of performer who can blend emotional depth, strong characterization, and unmatched charisma, Washington has earned his status as a modern great through an impressive career that has traversed action, comedy, drama, historical fiction, and so much more. With more Oscar-worthy performances under his belt than most actors even get film roles, everyone will have a different answer for what their favorite Washington movie is.
However, amid Washington’s long and fruitful career stands one Oscar-worthy role that was robbed of a well-deserved Academy Award. While Washington may have gained Hollywood’s most coveted prize for Best Supporting Actor for Glory in 1989 and Best Actor for Training Day in 2001, in between these two wins, he gave perhaps his greatest performance in a film by his long-time collaborator Spike Lee. Looking back all these years later, it’s hard to fathom how Washington lost out on this major accolade for what stands as definitive proof of his impeccable talent.
Denzel Washington Losing Best Actor At The 1993 Oscars Has Not Aged Well
This Is Not The Only Time The Academy Has Got It Wrong
In the history of the Academy Awards, there have been several major instances that, with the power of hindsight, stand as the ceremony’s most glaring misjudgments. A commonly mentioned error was Crash’s Best Picture win in 2005 over Brokeback Mountain or even Robert Redford earning Best Director for Ordinary People over Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull back in 1980. It’s with this same level of regret that we look back upon Denzel Washington losing the Best Actor award at the 1993 Oscars.
Not only did Washington give an outstanding performance as the тιтle character in the epic biographical drama Malcolm X, but he truly inhabited the role of the trailblazing African-American activist. This was a film that set a new standard for biographical dramas as Washington powerfully depicted the revolutionary leader Malcolm X through his early years promoting Black empowerment right through to his devastating ᴀssᴀssination.
Washington’s later win for Training Day could be seen as the Academy attempting to make amends for this terrible mistake.
Malcolm X was one of the most important movies of the 1990s. Had Washington earned an Oscar for his brave and uncompromising performance, it would have been an important acknowledgment of Black excellence at a time when it was so often overlooked. Looking back, this loss has not aged well and stands as yet another example of the Academy missing the mark and continually undervaluing Black-led performances. While Washington’s later win for Training Day could be seen as the Academy attempting to make amends for this terrible mistake, him winning for Malcolm X would have been a lot more meaningful.
Malcolm X’s Legacy Is Bigger In 2025 Than The Scent Of A Woman’s
Al Pacino’s Performance Did Not Have The Same Impact As Washington’s
Looking back, it’s abundantly clear that Denzel Washington deserved to win the Best Actor Oscar over Al Pacino’s role in Scent of a Woman. As one of Pacino’s most showy and bombastic roles, the nine-time Academy Award nominee played the blind, bitter retired colonel Frank Slade in a movie that was quite entertaining but not up to the same lofty standards set by Malcolm X. Pacino is one of the all-time greats, but looking back, it’s clear that he won this Oscar as an acknowledgement for the legacy of his entire career, rather than the appeal of Scent of a Woman.
In the more than three decades that have pᴀssed since the release of both Malcolm X and Scent of a Woman, it’s Lee and Washington’s biographical masterpiece that has endured as one of the most artistically courageous and impactful films in their respective careers. The truth was, Pacino gave far more Oscar-worthy performances in The Godfather movies, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, or even Glengarry Glen Ross, and although he deserves to be remembered as an Oscar winner, it was Denzel Washington who should have earned the statuette back in 1993.
