Jack Nicholson Wanted All The Best Actor Nominees At The 2003 Oscars To Boycott It Over The Iraq War, Claims Adrien Brody

This year’s Oscars telecast is already bound to be a hot mess, but while people marvel over the show’s bizarre invitation list, there’s a more serious concern looming large over everything: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Eighteen years ago, there was another global issue that hovered over the Academy Awards, and one in which America itself was the aggressor nation. In 2003, the ceremony took place shortly after the George W. Bush administration launched the Iraq War. And while viewers got to hear Michael Moore, accepting for his documentary Bowling for Columbine, tear the then-president a new one, the night could have been even more political than it was.

In a recent interview with the Sunday Times (as caught by Variety), Adrien Brody — who won that year for The Pianist — claimed that his fellow Best Actor nominees almost didn’t attend, at the behest of Jack Nicholson. The legendary actor, nominated that year for About Schmidt, invited his four competitors in that category — Brody, Daniel Day-Lewis, Michael Caine, and Nicolas Cage — over to his house, where he urged them to boycott the show in response to the Iraq War. Brody, though, was reluctant.

“I said, ‘I don’t know about you guys, but I’m going,’” Brody told the publication. “I said, ‘I kind of have to show up. My parents are coming. This doesn’t come around too often. I know you guys are all winners. You can sit it out. But I can’t.’”

In the end, no one boycotted it and Brody won. (He also infamously grabbed presenter Halle Berry for an unwanted kiss.) Instead of protesting the war with his absence, Brody used his speech to decry the war that would last for eight years and cost anywhere from hundreds of thousands of lives to over a million.

“I’m filled with a lot of sadness tonight because I’m accepting an award at such a strange time,” Brody told the crowd. “My experience of making this film made me very aware of the sadness and the dehumanization of people at the times of war, and the repercussions of war. Whomever you believe in, if it’s God or Allah, may he watch over you, and let us pray for a peaceful and swift resolution.”

There won’t be any such boycotts at this year’s ceremony, though attempts to make the show topical have been both ill-advised and, thankfully, impossible.

You can watch Brody’s win in the video below.