Denzel Washington

• Born: December 28, 1954
• Birthplace: Mount Vernon, New York

In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Denzel Washington distinguished himself as a versatile, critically acclaimed, and popular actor across many genres in film, television, and theater. He won Academy Awards in lead and supporting roles. Financial and artistic success made it possible for Washington to add producing and directing to his repertoire.

Early Life

Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. was born and raised in Mount Vernon, New York. His father was a Pentecostal minister, and his mother, who was originally from Georgia, owned and operated a beauty parlor. Washington was a high school basketball star at a private military academy in New York and at a public school in Florida. He played basketball for Fordham University during his first year of college but soon turned his attention to acting. After graduating from Fordham with majors in drama and journalism, Washington was awarded a scholarship to the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. He returned to New York City after one year to begin acting on stage and in television.

One of Washington’s first important theater roles was playing Malcolm X in the Negro Ensemble Company’s Off-Broadway production of When the Chickens Come Home to Roost (1981). The handsome young actor next spent six seasons (1982–88) on the popular television series St. Elsewhere.

Life’s Work

In 1989, Washington had one of his first major film roles as a formerly enslaved man turned Union soldier in Glory. He won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his searing performance. Washington next moved into leading roles in independent films, then big-budget films. By the mid-1990s he had become a Hollywood star.

During the 1990s Washington appeared in eighteen films, demonstrating tremendous versatility in productions ranging from Shakespearean comedy (Much Ado About Nothing, 1993) to science fiction (Virtuosity, 1995). He was equally successful as a homophobic lawyer in the celebrated AIDS drama Philadelphia (1993), a playful angel in the romance The Preacher’s Wife (1996), and an investigative journalist in the mystery thriller The Pelican Brief (1993). He frequently appeared (often in military or police uniform) in male-dominated thrillers (many directed by Tony Scott), appealingly balancing his athletic grace with a virile intensity. Although perennially named among People magazine’s Sexiest Men Alive, Washington avoided sexually explicit scenes onscreen, especially with White costars. Four films—Mo’ Better Blues (1990), Mississippi Masala (1991), Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), and He Got Game (1998), each directed by a person of color—were exceptions to this rule.

Among Washington’s many critically acclaimed performances in the 1990s, two major biographical roles earned Academy Award nominations: the title character in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X (1992) and boxer Rubin Carter in The Hurricane (1999). The sense of justified rage that characterized many of Washington’s performances particularly suited his portrayals of these two famous men. Meticulously prepared and known for his determination to stay in character, the actor used no stand-in for the grueling fight scenes in The Hurricane. Washington brought a special dedication to the complex role of Malcolm X. Not only did the actor build on his earlier stage interpretation of the Black American leader and devote himself to extensive research, but Washington also observed Islamic practices, fasting, abstaining from alcohol, and reading the Qur՚ān during the long production period. He collaborated with director Lee on the script and became familiar with all aspects of the production. The resulting performance was hailed as a major acting achievement and ranked seventeenth in Premiere magazine’s 2006 list of the one hundred best performances of the all time.

Washington has played a broad range of real and fictional Africans and Black Americans—from a murderous private first class in A Soldier’s Story (1984) and South African anti-apartheid leader Steve Biko in Cry Freedom (1987) to a demanding debate coach in The Great Debaters (2007) and a suave mobster in American Gangster (2007)—with grace, intensity, and skill. The actor also lobbied successfully for leading roles that were not race-specific in films such as Much Ado about Nothing, The Pelican Brief, Philadelphia, Crimson Tide (1995), Courage under Fire (1996), The Manchurian Candidate (2004), and The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009). In doing so, Washington not only created opportunities for himself but also stood as an example for race-blind casting.

In 2001, Washington became the second African American (after Sidney Poitier) to win an Oscar for Best Actor for his performance as a rogue cop in Training Day. Washington was the first African American to win two Academy Awards. In 1990, Washington launched his own production company, Mundy Lane Entertainment. He added directing to his repertoire with Antwone Fisher (2002) and The Great Debaters, both based on real-life achievements of African Americans, continuing his career-long association with biographical films.

Washington was one of the producers of the postapocalyptic drama The Book of Eli (2010), in which he starred as a survivor who travels a devastated world, clutching the only surviving Bible. Returning to the theater intermittently throughout his career, Washington played Brutus in a 2005 Public Theater production of Julius Caesar and the working-class protagonist in a Broadway revival of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning drama Fences in 2010. In preparing for his role in Fences as a former star athlete trapped in a demeaning job as a garbage collector, Washington recalled his experience of going backstage to see James Earl Jones, who originated the role. In 1983, when Washington was studying drama at Fordham University, seeing the magnetic Jones onstage inspired the younger actor to follow his dream to act on Broadway. Washington and costar Viola Davis each won a Tony Award for their roles in the production.

In 2006, Washington published A Hand to Guide Me, a book of recollections of the influences of mentoring on the lives of seventy people, many of them famous, including himself. The actor has traced much of his success to the guidance of his mentor from the Boys and Girls Club of Mount Vernon, New York. A grateful alumnus, Washington became a spokesperson for the Boys and Girls Club of America, and his book was issued to coincide with the centennial of the organization. The actor has supported many civic groups and has been known for his religious commitment. A devout Pentecostal, he has said that he reads the Bible daily. In 1983, he married Pauletta Pearson Washington, a professional singer and the daughter of the president of a historically Black university in North Carolina. They have four children. Washington’s son, John David Washington, born in 1984, is also an actor. In 1995, the couple renewed their wedding vows in South Africa before Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Washington acted in more than a half-dozen films during the 2010s, including Safe House (2012); Flight (2012), for which he received an Oscar nomination for best lead actor; and The Equalizer (2014) and The Equalizer 2 (2018). He also appeared in the 2016 multiracial remake of the western The Magnificent Seven and starred in the mystery Roman J. Israel, Esq. (2017). During that period Washington directed a film version of Wilson’s Fences (2016), which he also coproduced and in which he costarred alongside the award-winning actor Viola Davis. The film was the first of August Wilson’s ten Pittsburgh Cycle plays that Washington was set to direct and executive-produce for HBO over a ten-year period. The latter roles earned him a Screen Actors Guild Award and additional Oscar and Golden Globe nominations.

Washington next produced the musical biopic Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020), another film adaptation of an August Wilson play that featured Davis and his protégé Chadwick Boseman. The following year his performance in the crime thriller The Little Things (2021) was seen as a bright spot in an otherwise lackluster film. Washington made a triumphant return to Shakespeare in 2021 by starring as Macbeth in Joel Coen's film adaptation of the classic tragedy. The film received critical acclaim, and Washington's performance was widely praised. That same year, he directed Michael B. Jordan in A Journal for Jordan.

Continuing to receive various levels of recognition, in 2022 President Joe Biden honored Washington as one of the year's recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Significance

One of the most decorated Black American actors of his generation, Washington has drawn critical acclaim for the intensity and depth of his screen and stage performances. Both admirers and detractors characterized Washington as the Sidney Poitier of his generation: a handsome leading man who exudes intelligence, dignity, and a sense of controlled power, and who appeals to audiences of all genders and races. Although Washington has appeared in films of various genres, he played more biographical roles than any other film star, bringing a sense of authenticity to the lives of many diverse men. One of his most popular biographical roles was Herman Boone, a football coach at a newly integrated Virginia high school. In the family film Remember the Titans (2000), the authoritarian Boone forms a remarkably successful team from racially divided and suspicious players of both races. In this influential role and many others, Washington simultaneously embodies a strong pride in his race and supports a project of integration and mutual understanding. The celebrated actor was named America’s Favorite Actor three years in a row by a national Harris poll and commanded a salary of twenty million dollars for each film role by the early 2000s. Washington was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010 and presented with the Cecil B. deMille Award, a lifetime achievement honor, in 2016.

Bibliography

Brode, Douglas. Denzel Washington: His Films and Career. Carol, 1997.

Buckley, Cara. “Denzel Washington, the Oscars and Race.” The New York Times, 15 Feb. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/movies/denzel-washington-the-oscars-and-august-wilson.html. Accessed 21 July 2021. ‌

Guerrero, Ed. Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film. Temple UP, 1993.

Lee, Spike, and Kaleem Aftab. That’s My Story and I’m Sticking to It. W. W. Norton, 2005.

Park, Andrea. “Denzel Washington to Direct 10 August Wilson Plays for HBO.” CBS News. CBS Interactive, 18 Sept. 2015. Accessed 24 Sept. 2015.

Samuels, Allison. Off the Record: A Reporter Unveils the Celebrity Worlds of Hollywood, Hip-Hop, and Sports. Amistad/HarperCollins, 2007.

Scott, A. O. "'Tragedy of Macbeth' Review: The Thane, Insane, Slays Mainly in Dunsinane." The New York Times, 22 Dec. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/12/22/movies/the-tragedy-of-macbeth-review-denzel-washington.html. Accessed 4 Mar. 2022.

Washington, Denzel, with Daniel Paisner. A Hand to Guide Me: Legends and Leaders Celebrate the People Who Shaped Their Lives. Meredith Books, 2006.