THE ACADEMY AWARDS
Jack Nicholson Reportedly Wanted to Boycott the Oscars to Protest the Iraq War
According to Oscar winner Adrien Brody, Nicholson asked his fellow best-actor nominees to boycott the ceremony with him in 2003.
BY
CHRIS MURPHY
MARCH 22, 2022
KEVIN WINTER/GETTY IMAGES
The Oscars have a long history of
political protests, and
Jack Nicholson apparently sought to join that tradition. In 2003 the three-time Oscar winner reportedly urged his fellow best-actor nominees to boycott the ceremony with him in protest of the Iraq war.
Nicholson’s fellow nominee
Adrien Brody revealed Nicholson’s plan in an interview with
The Sunday Times, sharing that Nicholson invited all of the 2003 best-actor nominees over to his home to discuss their collective response to the war in regard to the ceremony. Nicholson, taking a page out of
Marlon Brando’s book, thought the best course of action was to stay home from the 2003 ceremony, but that didn’t sit right with Brody.
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“I said, ‘I don’t know about you guys, but I’m going,’” Brody told the
Times. “I said, ‘I kind of have to show up. My parents are coming. This doesn’t come around too often. I know you guys are all winners. You can sit it out. But I can’t.’”
Brody was the only first-time nominee of the bunch. He was joined by four previous winners:
Nicolas Cage for
Adaptation, Daniel Day-Lewis for
Gangs of New York, Michael Caine for
The Quiet American, and, obviously, Nicholson for
About Schmidt. Ultimately, all five men attended the ceremony, and it was Brody who emerged victorious for his role as Holocaust survivor Władysław Szpilman in
Roman Polanksi’s
The Pianist—planting a shocking and
unwanted kiss on presenter
Halle Berry before accepting his trophy.
Brody addressed the war in Iraq in his acceptance speech, saying, “I’m also filled with a lot of sadness tonight because I’m accepting an award at such a strange time. My experiences of making this film made me very aware of the sadness and the dehumanization of people at times of war, and the repercussions of war. And whomever you believe in, if it’s God or Allah, may He watch over you, and let’s pray for a peaceful and swift resolution.”
This Sunday’s Oscar ceremony will also take place during wartime, as
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues.
Amy Schumer, a 2022 Oscar host, recently
made headlines for revealing that she wanted Ukrainian president
Volodymyr Zelenskyy to appear during the ceremony via satellite or a pretaped video segment. “I actually pitched—I wanted to find a way to have Zelenskyy satellite in or make a tape or something just because there are so many eyes on the Oscars,” Schumer said on
an upcoming episode of The Drew Barrymore Show. “I am not afraid to go there, but it’s not me producing the Oscars.”
Vanity Fair has reached out to Nicholson for comment.
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