To many actors, there's no greater honor than winning an Academy Award in recognition of their performance. The Oscars, Hollywood's most star-studded and celebrated awards ceremony, honors performances voted on by the 10,000 of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, with their acknowledgment often validating years of commitment to cinema.
For all its pageantry and reverence, there are certain instances when principle, geography, and simple scheduling may make an actor choose not to attend the Oscars ceremony, and when the time comes to accept their iconic gold statuette, they may either not be present to accept it live or even refuse it outright.
Updated on Jan. 20, 2022 by Kayleena Pierce-Bohen: From Marlon Brando to George C. Scott, not even the Academy Award for Best Actor is enough to get them to attend the Oscars. And even when actors step outside of performing and venture into directing like Woody Allen, they still don't accept their Academy Awards. Some view the Oscars as nothing more than a popularity contest, and others just sleep through the ceremony. There are many reasons why actors haven't accepted their Oscars, live or at all.
Anthony Hopkins
After his initial win for Best Actor for playing iconic screen villain Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, Anthony Hopkins wouldn't win another Academy Award for three decades (though he'd be nominated plenty of times). When he won at the 2021 Academy Awards for The Father, he didn't participate in the live broadcast.
He didn't travel to a designated spot to give his acceptance speech (and the Academy wouldn't let him do it from home) but chose to post a video to his Instagram while appearing at his father's gravesite in Wales. The oldest acting Oscar winner thanked the Academy as well as giving tribute to Chadwick Boseman, his late contemporary and fellow Best Actor nominee for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.
George C. Scott
Known for playing such titanic public figures as Clarence Darrow, Scrooge, and General Patton, it was for the performance in the latter role that George C. Scott won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Upon knowledge that he might win, he politely told the Academy to "lose his number" because he viewed the Oscars as a "two-hour meat parade."
Scott declined his nomination and explained to the academy that he would refuse the Oscar if he won (he won regardless of his sentiment). It came a full decade after he declined his Best ing Actor nomination for appearing in The Hustler in 1961.
Marlon Brando
One of the most notorious speeches in the history of the Academy Awards wasn't given by the man who refused to take home the gold, but by Sacheen Littlefeather, a First American actress whom Marlon Brando (often considered the greatest actor of his generation) sent in his place, and brushed off the statuette from presenter Roger Moore.
Don Corleone himself refused to accept the Academy Award for Best Actor for The Godfather at the 1973 ceremony, choosing instead to make a political statement protesting Hollywood's treatment of First Americans by their inaccurate, derogatory, and racist portrayals in movies.
Elizabeth Taylor
Both Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were nominated for Best Actress and Best Actor Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but Burton managed to convince Taylor to not attend the 1966 Academy Awards because of his own insecurities.
Burton had missed out on Oscar gold four times before and didn't want to suffer through a fifth loss in front of all his peers, so he whisked the pair off to Paris. He ended up not winning while Taylor did, but in solidarity, she thumbed her nose at the Academy.
Paul Newman
Between the years 1961 and 1982, the sapphire-eyed screen legend received no less than six Academy Award nominations and attended every ceremony. In 1987, when he finally won for The Color of Money, the resilient star was nowhere around.
When he was tracked down by the Associated Press, the Cool Hand Luke star used a colorful analogy to explain his absence, "It's like chasing a beautiful woman for 80 years. Finally, she relents, and you say, 'I'm terribly sorry. I'm tired.'"
Michael Caine
Nominated in 1967, 1973, and 1984 for Best Actor, it wasn't until 1987 that Michael Caine actually won an Academy Award, and while he was victorious for his performance in Hannah and Her Sisters, the renowned English thespian was busy filming the fourth Jaws franchise installment Jaws: The Revenge.
When he won Best ing Actor once again for The Cider House Rules in 2000, he made sure to attend the Oscars. He would be nominated for Best Actor again in 2003 for The Quiet American.
Katharine Hepburn
To this day, Katharine Hepburn, star of classic movies like The Philadelphia Story and The African Queen, still has more Academy Awards to her name than any other actor (including Meryl Streep!). Despite winning four Oscars in her decades-long career, the lauded actress never attended the ceremonies where she would be expected to accept her own awards.
When she did finally attend the 1974 Academy Awards, it was to present the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, at which point she said, "I'm living proof that a person can wait 41 years to be unselfish."
Peter O'Toole
Peter O'Toole might have had good reason for refusing the honorary Oscar the Academy gave him in 2003. Out of a career lasting five decades, he had been nominated eight times for Best Actor and never managed to bring home an Oscar.
O'Toole told the Academy that he might still have a chance to "win the lovely bugger outright" to which it responded by explaining other stars including Henry Fonda and Paul Newman had gone on to win the bona fide gold after accepting their Academy Honorary Awards. At his children's behest, he finally accepted it.
John Gielgud
Sir John Gielgud was a legend of the stage and screen for eight decades, and in that time he won three Tonys, an Emmy, a Grammy, and two Oscars. In 1981, he was nominated for playing the indefatigable, sharp-tongued butler Hobson opposite Dudley Moore's foppish aristocrat in Arthur, a part he had turned down twice. As it happened, he turned down attending the ceremony, too.
Even though he won for Best ing Actor, he didn't accept the statuette himself, perhaps because as he explained in Richard Mangan's book Gielgud's Letter, award shows were full of "mutual congratulation baloney."
Woody Allen
Writer, director, and actor Woody Allen has been nominated for an Academy Award an impressive 24 times, winning the coveted Oscar four times. Three of the four were Best Original Screenplay awards, for Hannah and Her Sisters, Midnight in Paris, andAnnie Hall.
In 1974, even before receiving such acclaim for Annie Hall, Allen told ABC News that "the whole concept of awards is silly. I cannot abide the judgment of other people, because if you accept it when they say you deserve an award, then you have to accept it when they say you don't." He's only attended on Academy Awards ceremony so far (2002), and has never accepted his Oscars live.
