Denzel Washington
☼ Born on 28 December 1954, in Mount Vernon, New York, USA
Biography
Denzel Hayes Washington, Jr. was born on December 28, 1954 in Mount Vernon, New York. He is the middle of three children of a beautician mother, Lennis, from Georgia, and a Pentecostal minister father, Denzel Washington, Sr., from Virginia. After graduating from high school, Denzel enrolled at Fordham University, intent on a career in journalism. However, he caught the acting bug while appearing in student drama productions and, upon graduation, he moved to San Francisco and enrolled at the American Conservatory Theater. He left A.C.T. after only one year to seek work as an actor. His first paid acting role was in a summer stock theater stage production in St. Mary's City, Maryland. The play was "Wings of the Morning", which is about the founding of the colony of Maryland (now the state of Maryland) and the early days of the Maryland colonial assembly (a legislative body). He played the part of a real historical character, Mathias Da Sousa, although much of the dialogue was created. Afterwards he began to pursue screen roles in earnest. With his acting versatility and powerful presence, he had no difficulty finding work in numerous television productions.
He made his first big screen appearance in Carbon Copy (1981) with George Segal. Through the 1980s, he worked in both movies and television and was chosen for the plum role of Dr. Philip Chandler in NBC's hit medical series St. Elsewhere (1982), a role that he would play for six years. In 1989, his film career began to take prece
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dence when he won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Tripp, the runaway slave in Edward Zwick's powerful historical masterpiece Glory (1989).
Washington has received much critical acclaim for his film work since the 1990s, including his portrayals of real-life figures such as South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko in Cry Freedom (1987), Muslim minister and human rights activist Malcolm X in Malcolm X (1992), boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter in The Hurricane (1999), football coach Herman Boone in Remember the Titans (2000), poet and educator Melvin B. Tolson in The Great Debaters (2007), and drug kingpin Frank Lucas in American Gangster (2007). Malcolm X and The Hurricane garnered him Oscar nominations for Best Actor, before he finally won that statuette in 2002 for his lead role in Training Day (2001).
Through the 1990s, Denzel also co-starred in such big budget productions as The Pelican Brief (1993), Philadelphia (1993), Crimson Tide (1995), The Preacher's Wife (1996), and Courage Under Fire (1996), a role for which he was paid $10 million. He continued to define his onscreen persona as the tough, no-nonsense hero through the 2000s in films like Out of Time (2003), Man on Fire (2004), Inside Man (2006), and The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009). Cerebral and meticulous in his film work, he made his debut as a director with Antwone Fisher (2002); he also directed The Great Debaters (2007) and Fences (2016).
In 2010, Washington headlined The Book of Eli (2010), a post-Apocalyptic drama. Later that year, he starred as a veteran railroad engineer in the action film Unstoppable (2010), about an unmanned, half-mile-long runaway freight train carrying dangerous cargo. The film was his fifth and final collaboration with director Tony Scott, following Crimson Tide (1995), Man on Fire (2004), Déjà Vu (2006) and The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3. He has also been a featured actor in the films produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and has been a frequent collaborator of director Spike Lee.
In 2012, Washington starred in Flight (2012), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. He co-starred with Ryan Reynolds in Safe House (2012), and prepared for his role by subjecting himself to a torture session that included waterboarding. In 2013, Washington starred in 2 Guns (2013), alongside Mark Wahlberg. In 2014, he starred in The Equalizer (2014), an action thriller film directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by Richard Wenk, based on the television series of same name starring Edward Woodward. During this time period, he also took on the role of producer for some of his films, including The Book of Eli and Safe House.
In 2016, he was selected as the recipient for the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award at the 73rd Golden Globe Awards.
He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, Pauletta Washington, and their four children.
In the role of actor
Gladiator II (27/11/2024)
Ridley Scott returns to the Roman Colosseum with Gladiator II. It has been sixteen years since the death of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and his dream of making Rome a free republic has died under the rule of the twin Emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger). Aurelius’ grandson Lucius (Paul Mescal) has been living […]
The Tragedy of Macbeth (27/12/2021)
Joel Coen goes solo with this stylized adaptation of the play by William Shakespeare with The Tragedy of Macbeth. Following a victory on the battlefield, Thane of Glamis Macbeth (Denzel Washington) and his cohort Banquo (Bertie Carvel) are greeted by Three Witches (Kathryn Hunter), who tell Macbeth that he will be the next King of […]
2 Guns (02/08/2013)
Denzel Washington teams up with Mark Wahlberg in the buddy action-comedy 2 Guns. Washington plays an undercover DEA agent named Robert Trench, who is trying to trying to bring down a Mexican drug lord named Papi Greco (Edward James Olmos). His partner Michael Stigman (Wahlberg) wants to rob a bank Greco have been regularly depositing […]
the Taking of Pelham 123 (13/06/2009)
I always believe that a good thriller can be a quite entertaining film that you don’t have to put too much thought into. That’s what this film happens to be. The only Tony Scott film I really saw before this was Top Gun, however I may now be willing to check out some of the […]
American Gangster (03/11/2007)
Celebrity sighting aside, what did I actually think of the film? I can definitely say that it is NOT this year’s Departed. It’s not bad film, but I thought it was a very formulaic film. The entire plot goes back and forth between Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe‘s stories. The stories don’t even begin to […]