Forget Current #Oscar Hype – Young ‘Forrest Gump’ Actor Michael Humphreys’ Parents Were Too Poor To Buy 1995 Oscars Tickets, He Later Joins Military, Serves In Iraq
Fight, Forest, fight. His story doesn’t fit the Hollywood narrative.
Via The Daily Mail
Two decades ago the movie Forrest Gump was the toast of the Oscars – winning six Academy Awards including Best Actor for Tom Hanks and Best Director for Robert Zemeckis.
But child star Michael Conner Humphreys – who played a young Forrest in leg braces – missed out on his big chance to attend the biggest showbiz event on the planet.
His parents were offered the chance to buy tickets for the most important night of their son’s life but, unable to find the cash, eight-year-old Michael and his family watched the show at home on TV.
In an exclusive interview with Daily Mail Online, just days before this years Academy Awards, Michael recalls: ‘I was eight when this all went down, but my parents were asked if they wanted to buy an Oscar ticket and they couldn’t afford it.
‘The tickets were going to cost a lot of money, so we decided to just watch it on TV like everyone else.
‘At the time I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go or not, but it would be a different situation now.
‘I would try and go. As an eight-year-old I didn’t mind, that’s the perspective, I guess, of a child.
‘But we did watch it at home and were glad that it received as many awards as it did.’
The movie was a global success. It depicts several decades in the life of Forrest Gump, a slow-witted and naive, but good-hearted and athletically prodigious, man from Alabama who witnesses, and in some cases influences, some of the defining events of the latter half of the 20th century in the United States.
But despite missing out on the glitz of the Academy Awards back in 1995, Michael said Hollywood star Tom Hanks and director Robert Zemeckis both made an effort to congratulate him for his part in the movie.[…]
‘I attended the equivalent of the Oscars in other countries. I went to the BAFTAs [The British equivalent] so I attended some of the ceremonies,’ he said.
‘And I was awarded a couple. I have the equivalent of a German Oscar and the equivalent of a Japanese Oscar that I was given in those countries.
‘They look similar to Oscars, but they’ve just got different languages written on them.'[…]
Michael served four years in the U.S. Army as an infantry soldier, which included an 18 month tour of duty in Iraq.
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