Why Clint Eastwood boycotted the Oscars for 20 years: “Never invite me again”
Clint Eastwood has had an unusual relationship with the Academy Awards over the years. As of 2025, he had been nominated 11 times at the Oscars and had taken home four Little Gold Men. However, every single one of those nominations was from 1993 onward, meaning that for the first three decades of his career, Eastwood wasn’t even on the Academy’s radar. Indeed, the iconic Dirty Harry star boycotted the Oscars for two decades – and was so displeased with the Academy that he reportedly told its president “Never invite me again.”
For the first portion of his incredible career, Eastwood was an actor who mainly starred in westerns and action movies. As anyone with any knowledge of the Oscars knows, those genres aren’t exactly favourites of the Academy. Indeed, before ’93, only two westerns had ever won the ‘Best Picture’ award. Eastwood was never a favourite with critics in those days, either, with prominent New Yorker critic Pauline Kael being a particularly loud detractor of his acting abilities.
It’s perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that Peter McGilligan’s Clint: The Life and the Legend features a colourful quote from the star on why he believed he’d never be welcomed into the fold by the Academy. “I will never win an Oscar, and do you know why?” Eastwood remarked. Brazenly, Eastwood noted: “First of all, because I’m not Jewish. Secondly, because I make too much money for those old farts in the Academy. Thirdly, and most importantly, because I don’t give a fuck.”
Whether or not Eastwood truly uttered these fairly problematic words is up for debate, but given what happened in 1973, it does sound like a sentiment he’d agree with. On that fateful evening, Eastwood was slated to present the ‘Best Picture’ category, but when Academy president Howard Koch discovered Charlton Heston was running late to present the voting rules, he literally pulled Eastwood out of the audience to fill in for the Planet of the Apes star.
When Eastwood read through Heston’s scripted jokes, he found it was all centred around one of the star’s most famous roles. “It was a parody of Moses, The Ten Commandments,” Eastwood explained. “‘Thou shalt not be this and that,’ all relating to movies. Bad material, even for Moses.”
Eastwood turned to Koch – who refused to change the material – and said, “You gotta be kidding. Never invite me again.” When Koch replied, “Will you come back if you’re nominated?” Eastwood nodded, “Yeah, I’ll do that.” Koch’s snarky response, “Then I don’t have to worry” seemed to say everything about the Academy’s opinion of the Play Misty For Me star.
By the time Eastwood made it to the stage to sub for Heston, it was obvious he hadn’t taken Koch’s dismissive comment particularly well. “Come on, flip the card, man,” he joked while reading the cue cards. “This isn’t my bag.” Ultimately, Heston arrived while Eastwood was in the middle of the bit, and relieved him of his duties, but Eastwood was so annoyed that he’d been put in the awkward position at all that he memorably said, “They pick the guy who hasn’t said but three lines in 12 movies to substitute for him.”
For the next 20 years, Eastwood kept to his word and didn’t darken the Oscars’ door. He theoretically could have shown up when The Outlaw Josey Wales was nominated for ‘Original Music Score’ or when Bird was nominated for ‘Best Sound,’ but he stayed away.
In the end, he finally returned to the ceremony in ’93 when the Academy saw fit to nominate him personally for Unforgiven. He walked away on that night with ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ – but the Academy still managed to get one last dig in. After all, Eastwood lost out on ‘Best Actor’ to Al Pacino – and that was the one and only time he has ever been nominated in an acting category.
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