Bruce Springsteen calls his only Oscar win a ‘fluke’

Bruce Springsteen says that winning an Oscar for his song in Philadelphia was “a fluke.”

At the Storytellers event at Tribeca Festival the singer-songwriter was honored with the Harry Belafonte Voices for Social Justice Award and talked with longtime friend Bono about his decades-long career.

When reflecting on getting an Oscar for 1993's Streets of Philadelphia, Springsteen admitted it “was just kind of a fluke.”

“It really was because Jonathan Demme called me up and said, 'I need a rock song for the movie I just made.' And he told me a little bit about the film, and he sent me just an opening two minutes or so of it," the Grammy-winning singer recalled.

“I tried to write him a rock song when I just couldn't. So, I went next door, and I had a little synthesizer and a little drum machine and [in] a couple of days I wrote the song,” and even though Springsteen didn’t know if director Demme would “like it or not," he still sent it over.

“I sent it to him and he roughed it into the film, and then I sent him a real version, and he threw that out and kept the rough version that I sent him, and then we won the Oscar," the musician reflected.

The 1993 legal drama starred Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington. It centered around Hanks' Andrew Beckett, an attorney who sought Washington's character Joe Miller's help in suing his former employer, whom he claimed fired him because he was gay and had AIDS.

During his conversation with Bono, the With or Without You singer praised Springsteen for being "an activist" throughout his decades-long career, specifically pointing to his involvement in Philadelphia.

"It was really one of those things. If you do good things, good things happen. So, Jonathan Demme, who is deeply missed and was a wonderful, wonderful man, incredible filmmaker, kind of invited me into his film and I guess we lucked out," Springsteen said.

In addition to winning the Oscar for Best Original Song, Streets of Philadelphia won multiple Grammys, including Best Rock Song and Record of the Year, a Golden Globe for Best Original Song, and an MTV Movie Award for Best Song from a Film.