Denzel Washington:
Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. (born December 28, 1954) is an American actor and filmmaker. He has been described as an actor who reconfigured “the concept of classic movie stardom”. Throughout his career spanning over four decades, Washington has received numerous accolades, including a Tony Award, two Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards and two Silver Bears. In 2016, he received the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2020, The New York Times named him the greatest actor of the 21st century. In 2022, Washington received the Presidential Medal of Freedom bestowed upon him by President Joe Biden.
Washington started his acting career in theatre, acting in performances off-Broadway, including William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus in 1979. He first came to prominence in the medical drama St. Elsewhere (1982–1988). Washington’s early film roles included Norman Jewison’s A Soldier’s Story (1984) and Richard Attenborough’s Cry Freedom (1987). For his role as Private Silas Trip in the Civil War drama Glory (1989), he won his first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Throughout the 1990s, he established himself as a leading man in such varied films as Spike Lee’s biographical film epic Malcolm X (1992), Kenneth Branagh’s Shakespeare adaptation Much Ado About Nothing (1993) .
Personal life:
On June 25, 1983, Washington married Pauletta Pearson, whom he met on the set of his first screen work, the television film Wilma. They have four children: John David (born July 28, 1984), also an actor and a former football player, Katia (born November 27, 1986) who graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts in 2010, and twins Olivia and Malcolm (born April 10, 1991). Malcolm graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in film studies, and Olivia played a role in Lee Daniels’s film The Butler. In 1995, Washington and his wife renewed their wedding vows in South Africa with Desmond Tutu officiating. He is Pentecostal Evangelical Christian and a member of the West Angeles Church of God in Christ (Church of God in Christ), located in Los Angeles. He has considered becoming a preacher.
He stated in 1999, “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.” In 1995, he donated US$2.5 million to help build the new West Angeles Church of God in Christ facility in Los Angeles. Washington says he reads the Bible daily. On May 18, 1991, Washington was awarded an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Fordham University, for having “impressively succeeded in exploring the edge of his multifaceted talent”. In 2011, he donated $2 million to Fordham for an endowed chair of the theater department, as well as US$250,000 to establish a theater-specific scholarship at the school.
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Early work:
Washington spent the summer of 1976 in St. Mary’s City, Maryland, in summer stock theater performing Wings of the Morning, the Maryland State play, which was written for him by incorporating an African-American character/narrator based loosely on the historical figure from early colonial Maryland, Mathias de Sousa. Shortly after graduating from Fordham, Washington made his screen acting debut in the 1977 made-for-television film Wilma which was a docudrama about sprinter Wilma Rudolph, and made his first Hollywood appearance in the 1981 film Carbon Copy. He shared a 1982 Distinguished Ensemble Performance Obie Award for playing Private First Class Melvin Peterson in the Off-Broadway Negro Ensemble Company production A Soldier’s Play which premiered November 20, 1981.
A major career break came when he starred as Dr. Phillip Chandler in NBC’s television hospital drama St. Elsewhere, which ran from 1982 to 1988. He was one of only a few African-American actors to appear on the series for its entire six-year run. He also appeared in several television, motion picture and stage roles, such as the films A Soldier’s Story (1984), Hard Lessons (1986) and Power (1986). In 1987, he starred as South African anti-apartheid political activist Stephen Biko in Richard Attenborough’s Cry Freedom, for which he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. In 1989, Washington won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of a defiant, self-possessed ex-slave soldier in the film Glory.
2010s In Movies:
In 2010, Washington starred inThe Book of Eli, a post-apocalyptic action-drama set in the near future. Also in 2010, he starred as a veteran railroad engineer in the action filmUnstoppable, about an unmanned, half-mile-long runaway freight train carrying dangerous cargo. The film was his fifth and final collaboration with director Tony Scott, followingCrimson Tide(1995),Man on Fire(2004),Déjà Vu(2006) andThe Taking of Pelham 123(2009). In 2012, Washington starred inFlight, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as analcoholicairline pilot facing investigation for his part in a plane crash. He co-starred withRyan ReynoldsinSafe House, where he prepared for his role by subjecting himself to a torture session that includedwaterboarding In 2013, Washington starred in2 Guns, alongsideMark Wahlberg. In 2014, he starred inThe Equalizer, anactionthriller filmdirected byAntoine Fuquaand written byRichard Wenk, based on thetelevision series of same namestarringEdward Woodward. He reprised his role in his first sequel,The Equalizer 2(2018).RELATED:
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Early life and education:
Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. was born in Mount Vernon, New York, on December 28, 1954. His mother, Lennis “Lynne”, was a beauty parlor owner and operator born in Georgia and partly raised in Harlem, New York. His father, Denzel Hayes Washington Sr., a native of Buckingham County, Virginia, was an ordained Pentecostal minister, who was also an employee of the New York City Water Department, and worked at a local S. Klein department store. Washington attended Pennington-Grimes Elementary School in Mount Vernon until 1968. When he was 14, his parents divorced and his mother sent him to the private preparatory school Oakland Military Academy in New Windsor, New York. Washington later said, “That decision changed my life, because I wouldn’t have survived in the direction I was going. 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.” After Oakland, he attended Mainland High School in Daytona Beach, Florida, from 1970 to 1971. He was interested in attending Texas Tech University: “I grew up in the Boys Club in Mount Vernon, and we were the Red Raiders. So when I was in high school, I wanted to go to Texas Tech in Lubbock just because they were called the Red Raiders and their uniforms looked like ours.” Instead, he earned a BA in Drama and Journalism from Fordham University in 1977. At Fordham, he played collegiate basketball as a guard under coach P.J. Carlesimo. After a period of indecision on which major to study and taking a semester off, Washington worked as creative arts director of the overnight summer camp at Camp Sloane YMCA in Lakeville, Connecticut. He participated in a staff talent show for the campers and a colleague suggested he try acting.
Filmography:
2010 Unstoppable
The Book of Eli
2009 The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
2007 The Great Debaters
american gangster
2006 Deja Vu
inside man
2004 The Manchurian Candidate
man on fire
2003 Out of Time
2002 Antwone Fisher
John Q
2001 Training Day
2000 Remember the Titans
1999 The Bone Collector
The Hurricane
1998 Fallen
He Got Game
The Siege
1996 Courage Under Fire
The Preacher’s Wife
1995 Crimson Tide
Virtuosity
1993 Much Ado About Nothing
The Pelican Brief
Philadelphia
1992 Malcolm X
1991 Mississippi Masala
Ricochet
1990 Mo’ Better Blues
Heart Condition
1989 The Mighty Quinn
Glory.