Oscar Profile #381: Denzel Washington

Born December 28, 1954 in Mount Vernon, New York, Denzel Washington’s father was a Pentecostal minister who also worked in a department store. His mother was a beautician. His parents divorced when he was 14 and he attended various schools including Fordham University as a journalism major. Having caught the acting bug while appearing in school plays at Fordham, he attended graduate school at the American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) in San Francisco. He made his screen debut in the 1977 TV movie, Wilma.

The actor made his big-screen debut in 1981’s Carbon Copy and the following year became a member of the ensemble cast of TV’s St. Elsewhere, staying with the show through its last episode in 1988.

Having starred in the off-Broadway hit, A Soldier’s Playin 1981, he repeated his role in the Oscar nominated 1984 film version renamed A Soldier’s Story. He was nominated for an Oscar himself as South African anti-apartheid political activist Steven Biko in 1987’s Cry Freedom and won his first Oscar on his second nomination two years later as the defiant former slave civil war soldier in the historical epic, Glory.

Washington’s career exploded in the 1990s. He received his third Oscar nomination, his first as lead actor, in 1992’s Malcolm X. He followed that with high profile performances in such hits as 1993’s Much Ado About Nothing, Philadelphia and The Pelican Brief, 1995’s Crimson Tide and Devil in a Blue Dress, 1996’s Courage Under Fire and The Preacher’s Wife, 1998’s He Got Game and The Siege and 1999’s The Hurricane for which he received his fourth Oscar nomination.

A fifth Oscar nomination for 2001’s Training Day brought Washington his second Oscar and first for a leading role. He made his highly acclaimed directorial bow with 2002s’s Antoine Fisher but remained in demand as a leading actor. Subsequent films within the decade included the 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate, 2007’s and American Gangster and The Great Debaters, his second directorial effort, as well as the 2009 remake of The Taking of Pelham 123.

The current decade has been equally good to Washington, eliciting such successes as 2010’s The Book of Eli and Unstoppable, 2012’s Safe House and Flight, for which he earned his sixth Oscar nomination, 2014’s The Equalizer and the 2016 remake of The Magnificent Seven.

Washington earned two Oscar nominations for 2016’s Fences, his third directorial effort. He was nominated for both Best Actor and Best Picture as one of the film’s producers. He has been nominated for his ninth Oscar for this year’s Roman J. Israel, Esq. .

Married to actress Pauletta Washington since 1983, the couple has four children. At 63, Denzel Washington remains one of our busiest actors.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

MALCOLM X (1992), directed by Spike Lee

Generally regarded as Washington’s greatest performance, the actor played the controversial and influential Black Nationalist leader from his early days as a small-time gangster to his ministry as a member of the Nation of Islam and his eventual assassination. The film also provided stellar acting opportunities for Angela Bassett as his wife, Dr. Betty Shabazz and Al Freeman, Jr. as his charismatic mentor, Muhammed Elijah. There are also fine supporting turns by Delroy Lindo, Albert Hall and director Spike Lee himself. The film is based on two biographies, one by Malcolm X himself and one by Alex Haley, the author of Roots.

TRAINING DAY (2001), directed by Antoine Fuqua

Most of Washington’s characters have either been good guys or regular guys with a multiplicity of imperfections making them as down-to-earth as possible. He won his second Oscar, however, for playing a rare out-and-out bad guy, a rogue narcotics cop who presents ethical challenges for his new partner, a green rookie played by Ethan Hawks who received an Oscar nomination of his own for Best Supporting Actor although since the film is told from Hawke’s perspective rather than Washington’s, he was the actual lead, but such are the ways of Oscar. Antoine Fuqua has since directed Washington in three other films.

FLIGHT (2012), directed by Robert Zemeckis

Washington received his sixth Oscar nomination for one of his meatiest roles. He plays William “Whip” Whitaker, a commercial airline pilot who makes a miraculous crash landing when his plane makes a sudden nosedive due to severe turbulence, saving 96 of the 104 people on board, earning him hero status in national news coverage. However, things are not so simple as he is brought before the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) when a drug text performed on him while he lay unconscious recuperating in the hospital after the landing reveals that he was intoxicated during the flight. It’s a real nail-biter, and one of Robert Zemeckis’s best films.

FENCES (2016), directed by Denzel Washington

Set in Pittsburgh, PA between the years 1956 and 1962, August Wilson’s second play in his Pittsburgh cycle of ten, each one set in a different decade of the 20th Century, was chronologically his sixth. It is only the second filmed, and the first to be given a theatrical release. His fourth, The Piano Lesson, also chronologically his fourth as it was set in the 1930s, was made for TV in 1995. Washington and Viola Davis starred in the 2010 Broadway revival of this 1987 Tony award winner, for which both won Tonys. Davis repeated at the Oscars, but Washington did not, although he was nominated in two categories.

ROMAN J. ISRAEL, ESQ. (2017), directed by Dan Gilroy

Screenwriter turned director Dan Gilroy’s second directorial effort was one of the year’s most anticipated films, but it was not especially liked by the critics and audiences pretty much ignored it. That’s a shame because it contains Washington’s most heartfelt performance and his best since Malcolm X. He is especially good in the film’s first half as he battles injustice within the Los Angeles court system. The screenplay gets in the way of the film as it resorts to standard melodrama in the second half, but Washington maintains his stellar characterization throughout. He more than earned his eighth Oscar nomination for acting, his ninth overall..