The Academy Awards are supposed to be the pinnacle of the movie industry, but not every Hollywood superstar dreams of winning an Oscar.
Katharine Hepburn holds the all-time record for most acting wins at the Oscars, having received the Best Actress trophy four times. However, the Hollywood icon never once showed up to collect her Oscar statuette in person. (Hepburn’s one and only appearance at the Oscars occurred in 1974 to present the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award to producer Lawrence Weingarten.)
“Prizes are nothing. My prize is my work,” Hepburn famously said.
While the entertainment industry continues to be enamored with awards season, some prominent modern stars — including Bradley Cooper and Amanda Seyfried — have publicly complained about the hoopla surrounding the Academy Awards.
Keep scrolling for a look at stars who have shunned the Oscars and other awards shows.
Samuel L. Jackson
The Avengers star is one of the most accomplished actors of his generation to never win a competitive Oscar — in fact, he’s actually only been nominated once in his entire career, for Best Supporting Actor in 1995 for Pulp Fiction. (Samuel L. Jackson lost the Oscar that year to Martin Landau for Ed Wood.)
“As jaded as I wanted to be about it, you know thinking, ‘Well, I should have won an Oscar for this or should have won for that and it didn’t happen,’ once I got over it many years ago, it wasn’t a big deal for me,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2022. “I always have fun going to the Oscars. I always look forward to getting a gift basket for being a presenter. I give stuff to my relatives; my daughter and my wife would take stuff out. It’s cool … But otherwise, I was past it.”
Jackson said that he’d stopped taking Oscar nominations into consideration when choosing his roles.
“I’m not doing statue-chasing movies. You know: ‘If you do this movie, you’ll win an Oscar.’ No, thanks. I’d rather be Nick Fury [in Marvel]. Or having fun being Mace Windu [in Star Wars] with a lightsaber in my hand,” he added. “That’s the guy I chose to be and I’m fine with it. I’m satisfied because that’s who I am. I’m the guy who does the lines that people see on T-shirts.”
He continued, “There’s actors who go their whole careers and no one can quote a line they’ve said in a movie. People go to watch my movies to see how crazy I’m going to be or see how many times I say ‘motherf***er.’ Whatever gets them in the seats.”
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences finally recognized Jackson with an Honorary Oscar in 2021.
Seth Rogen
The comedian has four Emmy Awards, but he’s yet to receive an Oscar nomination. During a 2022 interview with Business Insider, Seth Rogen expressed confusion over why “movie people care so much if other people care what awards we give ourselves.”
“I don’t care who wins the automobile awards,” he joked. “No other industry expects everyone to care about what awards they shower upon themselves.”
Rogen argued that “people just don’t care” about who actually wins Oscars despite all of the hoopla that accompanies award season.
“Maybe they did for a while and they stopped caring. And why should they?” he asked.
Ethan Hawke
As of March 2026, Ethan Hawke has been nominated for acting Oscars five times, most recently for Best Actor at the 98th Academy Awards for his performance in Blue Moon.
Hawke told Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? in April 2024 that he took his Training Day costar Denzel Washington’s advice about winning — or losing — an Oscar.
“You don’t want an award to improve your status. You want to improve the award’s status,” Hawke recalled. “The Academy Award has more power, because Denzel has a couple. It didn’t elevate who he was.”
Cate Blanchett
The Australian actress has won two Oscars — a Best Supporting Actress Award for playing Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator in 2005 and Best Actress for 2013’s Blue Jasmine. Still, Cate Blanchett said during Variety’s “Actors on Actors” podcast that awards recognition has never influenced her decision to take on a role.
“Awards are so subjective … they’re not why you do the work,” she pointed out.
Kristen Stewart
In 2022, Kristen Stewart received her first-ever Oscar nomination for playing Princess Diana in Spencer. The Twilight star chose not to campaign for the Academy Award, explaining that she didn’t define success with awards.
“I don’t give a s***,” Stewart said on Variety’s “Award Circuit” podcast. “The Oscars are such a funny thing. There are so many incredible movies and performances that barely get seen. It definitely says something about where we’re at as a cumulative presence, like, what we’re looking at [and] what we care about.”
Joaquin Phoenix
Joaquin Phoenix has often shared his displeasure over awards season. When his movie The Master received Oscar buzz in 2012, Phoenix told Interview Magazine that he did not “want to be part” of any campaigning.
“I don’t believe in it. It’s the worst-tasting carrot I’ve ever tasted in my whole life. I don’t want this carrot,” he insisted.
Phoenix described the awards buzz for his performance in Walk the Line as “one of the most uncomfortable periods of my life.”
“I never want to have that experience again,” he said. “I don’t know how to explain it — and it’s not like I’m in this place where I think I’m just above it — but I don’t ever want to get comfortable with that part of things.”
Amanda Seyfried
For the star of The Testament of Ann Lee, an Oscar nomination is seemingly far more important than actually winning. (Amand Seyfried received her sole Oscar nomination in 2021 for Mank. She lost the Best Supporting Actress Award to Minari’s Yuh-jung Youn that year.)
Asked if winning an Oscar was important to her, Seyfried told The New Yorker in January 2026: “No. Do you remember who won in the past 10 years? It’s not the win that’s important. It’s the nomination. It does thrust you forward. That’s a fact. Now, do I need one in a week or two or whenever? No, of course, I don’t.”
Seyfried conceded that an Oscar win could be beneficial for “every reason,” though she still felt it was not a “necessity.” She went on to compare her critically acclaimed 2025 religious drama, The Testament of Ann Lee, to her more conventional blockbuster The Housemaid.
“Every single choice I made in [The Housemaid] was as artful as the choices I made in Ann Lee,” she said. “I finally was able to marry the two in my heart and in my head, and I realized that is what I want for the rest of my career. I’m going to jump between genres as much as I can, and jump between indies and studios. So I’ve gotten this far without an Oscar. Why would I need one now?”
Bradley Cooper
Bradley Cooper is one of the most nominated performers in Oscar history to never actually win a statuette. (Cooper has earned 12 total nominations as an actor and filmmaker, as of January 2026.)
Back in 2020, he called awards season “utterly meaningless” while chatting with Hamilton’s Anthony Ramos for Interview Magazine.
“That awards season stuff is a real test,” he said. “It’s quite a thing to work through, and it’s completely devoid of artistic creation. It’s not why you sacrifice everything to create art, and yet you spend so much time being a part of it if you’re, in quotes, ‘lucky enough to be a part of it.’ It’s ultimately a great thing because it really does make you face ego, vanity, and insecurity. It’s very interesting and utterly meaningless.”
During a subsequent appearance on SuperSoul Conversation, Cooper suggested that the Oscars and other awards shows “play into things that have nothing to do with creative art.”
“It’s a whole other element of the business,” Cooper added. “So, it’s really reconciling its effect on you. That’s the thing I have to deal with.”
Anthony Hopkins
Anthony Hopkins is one of very few actors to have won two Best Actor Oscars throughout his career — first for The Silence of the Lambs in 1992 and then again for The Father in 2021.
However, Hopkins once dismissed award season as “kind of disgusting” when he was getting Oscar buzz for his 2012 biopic, Hitchcock.
“You know, kissing the backside of the authorities that can make or break it; I can’t stand all that,” he complained to HuffPost at the time. “I find it nauseating to watch and I think it’s disgusting to behold.”
Hopkins admitted he was embarrassed to see colleagues “groveling around and kissing the backsides of famous producers.”
“It makes me want to throw up, it really does. It’s sick-making,” he declared. “I’ve seen it so many times. I saw it fairly recently, last year. Some great producer-mogul and everyone kisses this guy’s backside. I think, ‘What are they doing? Don’t they have any self respect?’ I wanted to say, ‘F*** off.’”
Glenda Jackson
Two-time Academy Award winner Glenda Jackson joked to Entertainment Weekly in 2016 that the Oscars were more about “frocks and the whole shebang of nonsense” than artistry. The British actress did not attend the Oscars ceremony any of the four times she was nominated.
“Nowadays, it seems like the real competition is between the different award shows,” Jackson pointed out. “The Golden Globes, back in my day, if you won you were lucky to get a notice in the next day’s Los Angeles Times. Now the coverage is ludicrous.”
Pressed on whether she was underselling the importance of an Oscar, Jackson shot back: “Prove it. See, you can’t. Who won last year? Who won the year before? Does it make one scrap of difference? At the time, it does, yes. But that’s not how human beings are.”
“We enjoy the glitz of the moment, which is what it is,” she argued. “But how can you say that [Civil Rights dramas] 12 Years a Slave or Selma has caused a fundamental cultural shift? And then you have these Black guys being shot by policemen. Would that the Oscars could change the world but, I’m sorry, it just ain’t true.”
Woody Allen
The actor-turned-director has won four Oscars throughout his career but famously refused to attend the ceremony any of the times he was nominated. (Woody Allen won Best Director twice for Annie Hall and Midnight in Paris, as well as Best Original Screenplay twice for Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters.)
“I have no regard for that kind of ceremony,” Allen once said. “I just don’t think they know what they’re doing. When you see who wins those things — or who doesn’t win them — you can see how meaningless this Oscar thing is. … I know it sounds terrible, but winning that Oscar for Annie Hall didn’t mean anything to me.”
Allen appeared at the Oscars only once in 2002 to honor the resilience of New York City in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.
Denzel Washington
Denzel Washington told Jake’s Takes in 2025 that Oscars were no longer a motivating factor in his career. (He won Best Supporting Actor for Glory in 1990 and Best Actor for 2002’s Training Day, in addition to being nominated eight other times throughout his career.)
“I don’t do it for the Oscars. I really don’t care about that stuff,” Washington insisted. “You know, I’ve been at this a long time, and there are times when I won when I shouldn’t have won … and didn’t win and should have won.”
He continued, “Man gives the award. God gives the reward. I’m not that interested in Oscars. People ask, ‘Well, where do you keep it?’ I say next to the other one. I’m not bragging. I’m just telling you how I feel about it.”
“On my last day, it ain’t gonna do me a bit of good,” Washington quipped.
George C. Scott
Perhaps no actor in Hollywood history had a more contentious relationship with the Oscars than George C. Scott. He issued a press statement in 1971 to request that the Academy rescind his Best Actor nomination for Patton.
“I respectfully request that you withdraw my name from the list of nominees. My request is in no way intended to denigrate my colleagues,” he said at the time. “Furthermore, peculiar as it may seem, I mean no offense to the Academy. I simply do not wish to be involved.”
The Academy declined to remove him from contention, and Scott eventually won the Best Actor Oscar at that year’s ceremony.
Per Time, Scott still likened the Oscars to a “goddam meat parade” and insisted that he did not “want any part of it.”
The Academy nominated him again for Best Actor anyway in 1972 for The Hospital, though this time he lost out to Gene Hackman for The French Connection.
Read the full article here
