By Brady Rhoades
In a speech at the Golden Globe Awards in 2016, actor extraordinaire Tom Hanks said of his friend Denzel Washington, “It’s odd how many of these immortals of the Silver Screen, of the firmament, need only one name to conjure the gestalt of their great artistry. In women, it’s names like Garbo, Hepburn, Stanwick, Loren. With men, it’s Bogart, Cagney, Gable. Now, you can check in the one-two punch of Gary Cooper and John Wayne, but a solo tag is the norm. Brando. Clift. Poitier. McQueen. Hoffman. DeNiro. Pacino.
“Now, the cliché, ‘the list goes on and on,’ does not apply here,” Hanks continued. “The club is exclusive, but it includes the actor who’s being given the Cecil B. DeMille award tonight. If Washington doesn’t ring out loud enough, let the first name carry all the weight, and that name is…Denzel.”
LONDON, ENGLAND – NOVEMBER 13: Denzel Washington attends “Gladiator II” The Royal Film Performance and Global Premiere at Leicester Square on November 13, 2024 in London, England. (Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage)
Just as the greatest generation talked with reverence about Garbo, Gable and Poitier, baby boomers, Gen-Xers and even millennials and Gen-Zers talk about Washington.
A lively conversation at any gathering of film lovers centers on two questions: What’s his best film? What’s his best performance?
Invariably, opinions fly like shrapnel in all directions. Glory! Training Day! Flight! Remember the Titans! No, no, it’s…American Gangster!
How does he weigh in on the matter?
Actually, he doesn’t.
“It’s simple,” Washington has stated. “You get a part. You play a part. You play it well. You do your work, and you go home. And what is wonderful about movies is that once they’re done, they belong to the people.”
ATLANTA, GEORGIA – SEPTEMBER 18: Nico F., Rozaria D. S., Arya P., Denzel Washington, Rima B-B., Alex Rodriguez, Kayleigh S., and Taylor R. attend the 2024 Boys & Girls Clubs of America Gala at Coca-Cola Roxy on September 18, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Derek White/Getty Images)
Washington has played a submarine commander, a Civil War Soldier (and slave), an alcoholic airline pilot, a corrupt cop, a no-nonsense football coach and more.
His most recent acting foray was Gladiator II, released on Thanksgiving weekend 2024, and it grossed about $30 million from Black Friday to Sunday of that weekend. He played Macrinus, a Roman emperor. Born in what is now Algeria, Marcus Opellius Macrinus was one of only a handful of Roman emperors who came from Africa. One of Macrinus’ memorable quotes was, “Violence is the universal language.”
Actor Extraordinaire
Washington, 70, was born in Mount Vernon, New York. His mother owned a beauty parlor. His father was an ordained Pentecostal minister who was employed by the New York City Water Department and also worked at S. Klein department store.
Washington attended Pennington-Grimes Elementary School in Mount Vernon until 1968. He was a regular at the local boys club. When he was 14, his parents divorced, and his mother sent him to Oakland Military Academy in New Windsor, New York.
UNIVERSAL CITY, CA – SEPTEMBER 25: Denzel Washington poses with children from the Boys and Girls Club “Extra” at Universal Studios Hollywood on September 25, 2014 in Universal City, California. (Photo by Noel Vasquez/Getty Images)
“That decision changed my life because I wouldn’t have survived in the direction I was going,” Washington said. “The guys I was hanging out with at the time, my running buddies, have now done maybe 40 years combined in the penitentiary. They were nice guys, but the streets got them.”
In 1977, Washington earned a bachelor’s degree in drama and journalism from Fordham University.
His first starring role on television was as Dr. Phillip Chandler on NBC’s St. Elsewhere, which ran from 1982 to 1988. A year after the show ended, Washington, who’d migrated to the Silver Screen, won Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of a Soldier and former slave in Glory. His next big movie role was in Spike Lee’s Mo’ Better Blues. From there, it’s a hit list of what have become classic films: Malcolm X, The Pelican Brief, Philadelphia, Crimson Tide, Much Ado About Nothing, Courage Under Fire, The Preacher’s Wife, He Got Game. He earned a Golden Globe Award—only the second, along with Sidney Poitier, for an African American actor—for The Hurricane, in which he played Ruben “The Hurricane” Carter, a boxer wrongly convicted of a triple murder.
He was stellar in Remember the Titans and Training Day. Film critic Roger Ebert said of Washington’s performance in the latter: “For Denzel Washington, it is a rare villainous role; he doesn’t look, sound or move like his usual likable characters… He’s like a monster from a horror film, unkillable and implacable.”
BEVERLY HILLS, CA – JANUARY 10: In this handout photo provided by NBCUniversal, Denzel Washington accepts with Cecil B. Demille Award with his family during the 73rd Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 10, 2016 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Paul Drinkwater/NBCUniversal via Getty Images)
American Gangster, released in 2007, earned $270 million. In 2014, the world was introduced to The Equalizer, in which Washington plays a former commando who pivots, in retirement, to an avenging angel. The Equalizer earned about $200 million, and each of the two sequels made roughly the same.
The Magnificent Seven, a western, and Fences, involving a bitter father who’s lost his hope of being a professional baseball player, followed.
Washington’s accolades are too plentiful to list in full. He’s earned two Academy Awards, a Tony Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award and two Silver Bears. One of his most treasured honors came when the United States Army made him the 2021 Honorary Sergeant Major of the Army for his work with the Fisher House Foundation, which provides homes for military personnel. In 2022, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Washington is what’s referred to as “range-y,” meaning he’s three, four, maybe 50-dimensional. One of those dimensions is his sense of service. In 1995, he donated $2.5 million to help build the new West Angeles Church of God in Christ in Los Angeles. Other philanthropic contributions include serving as a board member and the national spokesman for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, participating in Purple Heart ceremonies for veterans, donating money to the Fisher House Foundation and donating $1 million to the late Nelson Mandela’s Children’s Fund.
An Indomitable Spirit
Another dimension is his spirituality.
Washington, married with four children, is a Pentecostal Evangelical Christian and a member of the West Angeles Church of God in Christ. He reads the Bible daily and has considered becoming a preacher. He once stated, “A part of me still says, ‘Maybe, Denzel, you’re supposed to preach. Maybe you’re still compromising.’ I’ve had an opportunity to play great men and, through their words, to preach. I take what talent I’ve been given seriously, and I want to use it for good.”
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – NOVEMBER 19: (L-R) Pauletta Washington, Katia Washington, Erykah Badu, Todd Black, Jennifer Roth, Constanza Romero, Ray Fisher, Skylar Aleece Smith, Malcolm Washington, Danielle Deadwyler, Corey Hawkins, Michael Potts, Denzel Washington, Alexandre Desplat, John David Washington, Dan Lin and Virgil Williams attend Netflix’s “The Piano Lesson” LA premiere at The Egyptian Theatre Hollywood on November 19, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Roger Kisby/Getty Images for Netflix)
He remembers a crucial day in his evolution. Upon hearing the call to the church altar, he did what he’d never done.
He went up.
“I’m thinking, I’m just going to give it up to God today, whatever that means. And I got back there, and they were praying and telling it to us. I’m hallelujah-ing. I was just feeling. It felt like I was getting lifted up. It felt like my back was arched, and I had my eyes closed… And I was blabbering and kept blabbering because I was filled with the Holy Spirit. I could hear the people gathering around me. They had seen this before. I could feel them ministering to me, touching me. Talking to me. Protecting me. And then—this is going to sound like I was doing acid again—I came down. I was slobbering, and I was crying. I felt embarrassed because I didn’t know exactly what had happened. I hadn’t experienced it before, or even seen it… It was too powerful… It was unbelievable. It was exhausting.
“God is real. God is love. God is the only way. God is the true way. God blesses. It’s my job to lift God up, to give Him praise, to make sure that anyone and everyone I speak to the rest of my life understands that He is responsible for me. When you see me, you see the best I could do with what I’ve been given by my Lord and Savior. I’m unafraid. I don’t care what anyone thinks… I’m free now.”
A free man can try anything. What will that be? Producing more indelible art? Preaching?
A free man might even feel weightless, and yet, as Hanks said, the name in this case carries great weight, like Elvis or Pele or Obama. It’s anchored in the zeitgeist.
So, what’s next, Denzel? The world is watching.
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