Washington, Denzel

Source:

 African American National Biography

Washington, Denzel

(28 Dec. 1954– ),

actor and director, was born in Mt. Vernon, New York, the middle child of Denzel Washington Sr., a Pentecostal minister, and Lennis (maiden name unknown), a beautician and onetime gospel singer. Raised in a religious household in an integrated neighborhood just north of the Bronx, the Washington children were discouraged by their parents from watching television or movies. Instead, Denzel passed the time attending church, assisting his mother in the beauty parlor, and participating as a member of the Boys Club and the local YMCA. At age fourteen, when his parents divorced, Denzel helped his family make ends meet by working part time at the local dry cleaner and in his mother's barbershop.

Troubled by his parents' separation, Denzel developed a rebellious attitude and his schoolwork declined. Anxious to set him on the right path, his mother enrolled him in the largely white private school Oakland Academy in New Windsor, New York. His behavior problems eased as Denzel found other, more productive outlets, including playing baseball, track, football, and basketball. Off campus he played piano with a local blues band. After graduating from Oakland in 1972, Washington enrolled at Fordham University in New York City, where he began as a pre-med student, but eventually ended up as a journalism and drama major. Washington briefly dropped out of school owing to poor grades, and when he returned found success on the stage. Washington played the title roles in school productions of The Emperor Jones and Othello and his onstage work was strong enough to net him an agent prior to graduation and a small part in the television movie Wilma (1977) about track star Wilma Rudolph.

In 1977 Washington finally graduated from Fordham after which he entered the acting program at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, leaving the program after the first year of a three-year program, in order to move to Los Angeles. Although he won minor stage roles and a small part in the television film Flesh and Blood (1979), Washington was financially and artistically frustrated in Los Angeles and he soon moved back to his mother's house in Mt. Vernon. Upon his return to the East Coast, Washington became reacquainted with Pauletta Pearson, an actress and singer he had met on the set of Wilma. The couple married in 1983 and had four children, later living in a house designed by Paul Revere Williams.

In 1980 Washington took a job teaching sports at a children's recreation center. Only one week before his job was to begin, Washington was cast as Malcolm X in When the Chickens Come Home at Woodie King's New Federal Theater. Critics were impressed with Washington's performance, especially his willingness to physically transform himself to play the role, and he was awarded the Audelco Award for Excellence in Black Theater.

Washington then landed the lead role opposite George Segal in Carbon Copy, a comedic film universally panned upon its release in 1981. That same year Washington was cast as Private Peterson in the Negro Ensemble Company's Off-Broadway production of Charles Fuller's A Soldier's Play. Focusing on the investigation of a racially charged murder during World War II, the play won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, an Obie Award for Best Ensemble Performance, and an Outer Circle Critics Award for Washington. Washington reprised the role in Los Angeles, remaining with the play until being cast as Dr. Phillip Chandler in the television drama St. Elsewhere, a role he played from 1983 to 1987.

Denzel Washington, relaxing at a sporting event, c. 2005. (Courtesy of Spencer A. Burnett.)

view larger image

In 1984 Washington reprised his role as Private Peterson in Norman Jewison's film adaptation of A Soldier's Play, renamed A Soldier's Story. In 1986 Washington appeared opposite Richard Gere in the Sidney Lumet film Power (1986) and the television movie The George McKenna Story, a fact-based story about a school principal in a tough inner-city Los Angeles high school. The following year his performance as the martyred South African leader Steven Biko in Sir Richard Attenborough's film Cry Freedom (1997) earned him an NAACP Image Award and an Academy Award nomination. Proud to be recognized by his peers, Washington was nonetheless vociferous about the way the film emphasized the story of Biko's white liberal lawyer, played by Kevin Kline, at the expense of Biko. With his outspoken criticism, Washington emerged as a spokesman for increased visibility and better-quality roles for black entertainers. “The success narrows the roles you get to play, race narrows the roles you get to play,” commented Washington (Chicago Tribune, 1 Feb. 1988).

In 1988 Washington made his Broadway debut in Ron Milner's comedy Checkmates. Later that year he starred in For Queen and Country and the Caribbean film caper The Mighty Quinn alongside Robert Townsend. In 1989 Washington gave a searing performance in Glory, a film based on the letters of Colonel Robert G. Shaw (played by Matthew Broderick in the film), leader of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the unit of African American soldiers in the Civil War established in 1863. Appearing with Morgan Freeman and Andre Braugher, Washington played Trip, a former slave who played a key role in the unit's attack on Battery Wagner, an important fortification of Charleston, South Carolina. For his performance Washington received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

In 1990 Washington emerged as a matinee idol following his work in Spike Lee's romance-drama Mo' Better Blues. He played the role of a self-absorbed jazz trumpeter, Bleek Gilliam, a character loosely based on Miles Davis. In 1992 Washington received the NAACP Best Actor Award for his performance in Mississippi Masala, a romantic drama about black and Asian relations in the American South. The same year he returned to the role of Malcolm X in Spike Lee's controversial biopic X. His startling performance garnered him a slew of accolades, including an Academy Award nomination, a NAACP Image Award, and the Chicago, Boston, and New York critics' awards.

Handsome and stirringly charismatic, Washington was voted one of People's “Fifty Most Beautiful People in the World” in 1994. One of the highest paid African American actors in Hollywood, he had become known for playing virtuous and heroic—if troubled—black men. Meanwhile, Washington continued to diversify as an actor, playing opposite Kenneth Branaugh and Emma Thompson in Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing (1993) and Tom Hanks in the AIDS drama Philadelphia (1993), and starring in the Hollywood thrillers The Pelican Brief (1993), Crimson Tide (1995), Courage under Fire, Fallen (1998), The Siege (1998), and The Bone Collector (1999). In 1995 he starred as Easy Rawlins in Carl Franklin's film adaptation of Walter Mosely's book Devil in a Blue Dress, about a 1940s black private investigator. The following year he again worked with a black cast in The Preacher's Wife (1996) and re-teamed with Lee for He Got Game (1998) and Bamboozled (2000). In 2000 he netted another Best Actor Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of wrongfully imprisoned Rubin Carter in Norman Jewison's The Hurricane.

Over the course of his film career, Washington maintained his public image as a devout family man, even coaching his children's sports teams. On a summer trip to South Africa in 1995, Denzel and Pauletta Washington renewed their marriage vows in a ceremony officiated by archbishop Desmond Tutu. Denzel Washington, who has donated $1 million to the Children's Fund of South Africa, $2.5 million to the Church of God in Los Angeles, and time and money to the Boys and Girls Club, received the Whitney M. Young Award from the Los Angeles Urban League in 1997.

For his complex performance as a rogue cop in Antoine Fuqua's drama Training Day (2001), Washington became the first black actor since Sidney Poitier to win an Academy Award for Best Actor. The film revealed yet another side of Washington's remarkable diversity as an actor, since he was cast against type as the film's “bad guy.” He emerged to great critical acclaim as a film director with The Antwone Fisher Story (2002), a psychological drama based on the true story of the title character, a Sony Pictures security guard who eventually gained fame as a writer and Hollywood producer. In 2004 Washington starred in the Frank Sinatra role in Jonathan Demme's remake of The Manchurian Candidate. Two years later he teamed up with Lee again in the crime drama Inside Man. In 2007 Washington showed his versatility by starring as drug kingpin and crime boss Frank Lucas in American Gangster, receiving a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor, and as the famed Wiley University debate team coach, Melvin B. Tolson, in The Great Debaters. For the latter film, a rare Hollywood glimpse of life in a southern black college in the 1930s, Washington won a record ninth NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture. He repeated that feat in 2011 for his starring role as a post-Apocalyptic nomad in The Book of Eli (2010), but the film received mixed critical reviews. Washington also appeared in two high grossing action thrillers, The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009) and Unstoppable (2010); both involved runaway trains, and both were directed by Tony Scott. It was on the stage, however, that Washington enjoyed his greatest critical success in the 2000s. In 2005 he portrayed Marcus Brutus in Shakespeare’s Julius Casear on Broadway, and in 2010 won the Tony Award for best lead actor in August Wilson’s play, Fences.

About his career as an actor, Washington once remarked, “I'm just trying to fulfill my part of the bargain, which is to give back, to be a positive influence on others” (Jet, 2 Oct. 1995, 32). One of the few African American men in the film industry with the power to pick roles and “greenlight” projects, Washington has remained in firm control of the destiny of his career.

processed xml | source xml