Often times in Hollywood, those who don’t win an Oscar will say they were just glad to be nominated, and those who weren’t nominated say they were simply happy to be among such a stellar cast. But not Anthony Mackie, because he was totally honest about feeling broken over an Oscar snub.
In a recent interview with Men’s Health, the 40-year-old said he felt horrible when he didn’t get an Oscar nod for his role in the 2009 film “The Hurt Locker.”
Mackie played sergeant J. T. Sanborn in the movie, which he really threw himself into, which is why he was so let down — especially since the film itself was nominated nine times and won Best Picture.
At first, the actor told himself he wasn’t affected by it all, but that approach didn’t last.
“I put everything in that movie,” he said. “That little f–ker matters. We try to protect ourselves and say, ‘I’m doing the work for the work.’ But when that happened with ‘Hurt Locker,’ it hurt. I had to take a year off of work.”
To heal, Mackie took on a project that had nothing to do with film cameras, wardrobe or makeup people: He slowly worked on a 1964 vintage Mustang at home.
“I sat in my garage and I built a car,” he explained. “It was very, very therapeutic.”
Mackie will now take over Marvel’s “Captain America” franchise since his “Avengers” character Sam Wilson aka Falcon inherited the responsibility from Chris Evans, who’s played the masked hero.
Elsewhere in the interview, Mackie talked about playing the black superhero Falcon, and how he’s loved him since a child growing up in New Orleans
“Growing up, I’d always loved Falcon, because he was a comic-book hero who was black who didn’t have ‘black’ in the title,” he stated. “He stood on his morals. He stood on who he was.”
