Academy Award for Best Picture

1992

Unforgiven

Release dates

August 7, 1992

Starring

Clint Eastwood

Gene Hackman

Morgan Freeman

Richard Harris

Unforgiven is a 1992 American Western film produced and directed by Clint Eastwood with a screenplay written by David Webb Peoples. The film portrays William Munny, an aging outlaw and killer who takes on one more job years after he had turned to farming. A dark Western that deals frankly with the uglier aspects of violence and how easily complicated truths are distorted into simplistic myths about the Old West, it stars Eastwood in the lead role, with Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, and Richard Harris. Eastwood has stated that this would be his last Western for fear of repeating himself or imitating someone else's work.

Eastwood dedicated the movie to deceased directors and mentors Don Siegel and Sergio Leone. The film won four Academy Awards: Best Picture and Best Director for Clint Eastwood, Best Supporting Actor for Gene Hackman, and Best Film Editing for editor Joel Cox. Eastwood was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, but he lost to Al Pacino for Scent of a Woman. In 2004, Unforgiven was added to the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

The film was the third Western to win the Oscar for Best Picture, following Cimarron (1931) and Dances With Wolves (1990).