In the Academy Awards, no one has ever heard of an award recipient standing before a jubilant and envious audience and saying, “No, thank you, I really didn’t make this film, and I do not deserve your recognition. I am rescinding this honor you have bestowed upon me.” Of course not. People who don’t win an Oscar, the most prestigious award in the Hollywood film industry, repeatedly claim that it’s just an honoree to be nominated. They’d never return the coveted award. It sounds absurd even to think of it.
Unlike Miss Universe and other such beauty pageants, where a second-place winner is selected in the event that Miss Universe is not able to complete her job, nobody has ever declined an Oscar or returned one for any reason. Not even after the 2022 brouhaha when Will Smith assaulted Chris Rock and then received the Best Actor award. Even accused sex offenders Roman Polanski and Woody Allen have been feted by the Academy, despite allegations against them.
There were three people in all the Academy Awards history to decline to receive their Oscar, but these were more in protest of the commercialization of the Academy and a strike in Hollywood than because they did…
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