Ben Affleck’s Huge Oscars Snub 13 Years Ago: An Immense Humiliation Revealed!

Earlier this month, Ben Affleck appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” (via Variety) to promote The Rip on Netflix and revisited the “tremendous humiliation” of not being nominated at the Oscars for Argo. Despite being a frontrunner at the time—having won Best Director at the Golden Globes, the Critics Choice Awards, and the BAFTAs—Affleck was “snubbed” even though Argo garnered seven Oscar nominations and won Best Picture along with two other awards.

“It was the year everyone kept telling me, ‘You’re going to get nominated, you’re going to get nominated for Best Director,'” Affleck recalled. “So, of course, I wake up that morning, and obviously… – and it’s not unlike other mornings where I hadn’t been nominated for Best Director. But suddenly, it’s a huge disgrace. I wake up and people are telling me, ‘You weren’t nominated.'”

Affleck’s story reminded Jimmy Kimmel of his attendance at the Critics Choice Awards the night before the interview, where One Battle After Another swept the awards for Best Film, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, although Leonardo DiCaprio, the lead actor, didn’t win Best Actor (awarded to Timothée Chalamet for Marty Supreme).

“I was thinking, ‘My God, he has better things to do,'” Kimmel joked about DiCaprio. “And the film wins Best Film. The director, Paul Thomas Anderson, wins Best Director, and then… he doesn’t win. I was thinking he must be furious to have left the place he was airlifted from – a yacht, somewhere – and not be able to stay. He came to lose.”

“The Worst Situation,” According to Kimmel

“It might be the worst situation in the history of award shows,” Kimmel continued. “I think you’re downplaying it. Because Argo wasn’t just nominated for Best Picture, you won it. You starred in it and directed it, and you weren’t nominated in either category… it’s as if the film made itself.”

“That’s kind of how I felt,” Affleck responded. “The day I was snubbed, suddenly it became this negative, horrible event, and I had to go to the Critics Choice Awards. I remember arriving and seeing a line on the red carpet, about 500 people dying to talk to me, each of them saying, ‘Hey! So, about that snub…’ What do you say to that? ‘It’s really unfortunate!’ I ended up winning the Critics Choice Award.”

“Honestly, it’s just plain embarrassing. I wasn’t the type to say, ‘I’m going to get nominated!’ It’s the ritual of then having to explain why you weren’t nominated. I never said I would be!”

Bradley Cooper in the Same Boat

Bradley Cooper, who was also overlooked for the Best Director award with A Star Is Born despite nominations at the Golden Globes, the Critics’ Choice Awards, and the Directors Guild of America Awards, can relate to what Ben Affleck experienced. Cooper also described this slight as “embarrassing.”

“Actually, my first reaction was shame. Think about it. I was embarrassed not to have done my part,” Cooper confessed to Oprah in 2019 (via IndieWire). “Even if I had been nominated, it shouldn’t have influenced my decision. The whole secret is to create something you believe in.”

Cooper explained that his goal was not to make a film nominated for Oscars, adding, “My only aim was to create an environment as authentic as possible. [An authentic place] within myself and among everyone I asked to participate in this film: to tell a human story, one of people dealing with their family life, childhood traumas, addiction, love, and the pursuit of their own path.”

Argo is currently available for streaming on HBO Max.

Watch the full interview with Ben Affleck in the video below:

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