The Oscars is known as “Hollywood’s Biggest Night,” but not every Academy Award winner has graciously accepted their golden trophy.
Many actors have spoken openly about their ambivalence toward awards season, even though most still show up at the Oscars when they receive an all-important nomination. Even Joaquin Phoenix — who once called his awards campaign for Walk the Line “one of the most uncomfortable periods of my life” — made peace with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and accepted his Best Actor Award for Joker in person in 2020.
However, three Hollywood luminaries made history by outright rejecting their Oscar wins. Marlon Brando memorably sent activist Sacheen Littlefeather to deliver a plea on behalf of Native Americans when he won Best Actor for his career-defining role in The Godfather in 1972.
Fellow acting icon George C. Scott and screenwriter Dudley Nichols also turned down their Oscars — both for very different reasons.
Keep scrolling for more details on why three Hollywood stars rejected the Oscars:
Why Did Dudley Nichols Reject His Academy Award?
Dudley Nichols became the first person ever to decline an Academy Award when he won Best Original Screenplay in 1936. The veteran screenwriter penned Golden Age classics like Bringing Up Baby, Gunga Din and Stagecoach, but it was his political thriller The Informer that won him an Oscar.
Nichols’ Oscar win came at the most inconvenient possible time because he was heavily involved in founding the Screen Writers Guild. Hollywood studios shunned writers from the Screen Writers Guild in favor of an offshoot union called Screen Playwrights Inc., which more closely aligned with the studios’ interests.
“As one of the founders of the Screen Writers’ Guild … born out of disappointment with the way [the Academy] functioned against employed talent — I deeply regret I am unable to accept the award,” Nicholas announced when he won Best Original Screenplay.
The National Labor Relations Board eventually intervened to certify the Screen Writers Guild as the exclusive bargaining union for Hollywood writers that same year — meaning the studio-friendly Screen Playwrights Inc. was dissolved. (The Screen Writers Guild later reorganized as the Writers Guild of America.)
With the dispute settled, Nichols eventually accepted his Best Original Screenplay Oscar in 1938.
George C. Scott
George C. Scott possibly had the nastiest feud with the Academy in Hollywood history. While he received four total career Oscar nominations, he refused to ever attend the awards show.
Scott took his grudge against the Academy one step further by demanding that his Best Actor nomination for 1970’s Patton be rescinded.
“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 in a press release. “Furthermore, peculiar as it may seem, I mean no offense to the Academy. I simply do not wish to be involved.”
Elsewhere in the statement, Scott was openly hostile as he compared the Oscars to a “goddam meat parade” and insisted that he did not “want any part of it,” per Time.
The Academy disregarded Scott’s request and gave him the Best Actor Oscar anyway that year, though he refused to accept the award.
When Scott received another Best Actor nomination the following year for The Hospital against his wishes, he ignored awards season completely. He was never nominated for an Oscar again.
Marlon Brando
Frequently described as one of the greatest actors of all time, Marlon Brando accepted his first Best Actor Oscar win for On the Waterfront in 1955 but had grown disillusioned with the industry by the time he won again for The Godfather in 1973.
Brando chose to use the time allotted for his acceptance speech to draw attention to the siege between Native American activists and U.S. Marshals at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. He declined to attend the Oscars in person, instead sending National Native American Affirmative Image Committee president Sacheen Littlefeather to deliver a message on his behalf.
Presenter Roger Moore attempted to hand Brando’s Oscar statuette to Littlefeather on stage but she refused to take it.
“My name is Sacheen Littlefeather. I’m Apache and I am president of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee,” she told a stunned audience. “I’m representing Marlon Brando this evening and he has asked me to tell you in a very long speech, which I cannot share with you presently because of time but I will be glad to share with the press afterwards, that he very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award.”
She continued, “The reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry – excuse me – and on television in movie reruns, and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee. I beg at this time that I have not intruded upon this evening and that we will in the future, our hearts and our understandings will meet with love and generosity. Thank you on behalf of Marlon Brando.”
Littlefeather alleged in a 2022 interview with the Academy that her message angered John Wayne so much that he nearly attacked her backstage. (Wayne died at age 72 in 1979 and thus could not respond to Littlefeather’s allegation.)
“[John Wayne] did not like what I was saying up at the podium,” Littlefeather revealed. “So, he came forth in a rage to physically assault and take me off the stage. And he had to be restrained by six security men in order for that not to happen.”
Littlefeather recalled that others in the Oscar audience reacted to her message about Wounded Knee by pantomiming “tomahawk chops.”
“I thought, ‘This is very racist. Very racist indeed,’” she said. “And I just gracefully walked and ignored them. They put two armed guards around me, and said they were going to take me to these different press rooms. One was for television press, radio press and international press. And I would have about 10 minutes in each press room, and that was it. And then, I was escorted out the door.”
During a 1973 appearance on The Dick Cavett Show, Brando stood by his decision to boycott the Academy Awards.
“Since the [Native American] hasn’t had the ability to have his voice heard anywhere in the history of the United States, I thought it was a marvelous opportunity for [a Native American] to voice his opinion to 85 million people,” Brando argued. “I felt that he had a right to, in light of what Hollywood has done to him.”
Brando added, “I was embarrassed for Sacheen. She wasn’t able to say what she intended to say. I was distressed that people should have booed and whistled and stomped, even though perhaps it was directed at myself.”
The Academy didn’t hold the controversial boycott against Brando, as he received a Best Actor nomination again the following year for Last Tango in Paris and later earned a Best Supporting Actor nod for A Dry White Season.
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