The Equalizer 3, on course to finish the holiday as the second highest Labor Day domestic box office weekend ever, is a fitting snapshot of the disciplined manner in which Denzel Washington built one of the great careers of his generation. The final installment of his first franchise cost a reported $70 million, modest compared to most third franchise installments, and Washington has always been cognizant of the need to make money for investors of his films.
“I feel like I’ve just been chopping wood,” Washington said years back in describing his approach and the slow road to making $20 million a picture. “I found my wheelhouse in films that cost $50 million, which, if they open at $20 million, will give the studios their money back. Nobody has asked me to put on tights for one of those superhero movies, and I’m not saying I wouldn’t have wanted to make $25 million when I was 25 years old, because I surely wouldn’t have walked away from it. But for me, spending $100 million or $150 million is questionable. I’m still making pictures for $50 million and found a niche and I think studios are still comfortable with me there.”
Washington is as methodical as Equalizer’s OCD assassin Robert McCall. Early on, he embraced advice given him by Sidney Poitier, who said, “If they see you for free all week, they won’t pay to see you on the weekend.” Washington took it to heart: “To have longevity as an actor in movies you have to have some mystery. I’m not interested in all that. I’ll do an interview because I’m selling a movie. I’m not selling me.” So no future as a social media influencer for him. He disappears from view until supporting a new movie.
Along the way, Washington won the Academy Award twice, a Tony Award and three Golden Globes, and branched out into directing as well as producing. In the latter role, he was entrusted by the estate of Fences playwright August Wilson to bring his works to life as films and TV productions. One of those was Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the final work of Chadwick Boseman before he died from colon cancer at 43 while the film was in post-production. Aside from being a symbol for acting excellence, Washington has helped many and that included helping Boseman when the star quietly paid the tab for Boseman and other Howard University students to a summer session at the British American Drama Academy, an opportunity the students auditioned for but then couldn’t afford to accept until Washington stepped in to cut the check. When acting, Washington is known to focus fully on the work, which is where his imagery of chopping wood is most relevant. Focus on splitting the wood one log at a time, or risk injury, he said. In his case, that means not allowing the distractions of stardom and hubris to get in the way. Washington has said he would “rather be good than famous,” just happening, in the end, to pull off both. As his two-time co-star Liev Schreiber once said, “I never worked with an actor who seemed to care more.”
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St. Elsewhere (1982-1988)
Image Credit: NBC/courtesy Everett Collection Washington had designs on the big screen after soaring in live theater in A Soldier’s Play and playing Malcolm X in When the Chickens Came Home to Root. But his film debut Carbon Copy flopped, and Washington found his big break as part of a sharp actor ensemble in the NBC medical drama Chicago Hope. What he figured would be a 13-week job turned into a six year turn as Phillip Chandler, a doctor at a rundown Boston teaching hospital who comes to the profession at the behest of his demanding father. “I did my best to stay out of the limelight,” he said, which was easy because “St. Elsewhere had so many characters, you could get sort of lost in the sauce and be able to sneak out and do films. And it was a great show.” Confident bordering on arrogant, Washington’s character wound up falling for Dr. Roxanne Turner (Alfe Woodard) and departing the hospital in the final season, in a stunning turn of events, to begin a new life with her in Mississippi.
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A Soldier’s Story (1984)
Image Credit: Columbia Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection At a time when it was perilous for a movie-minded actor to stay in television too long, Washington made the most of his downtime. He reprised in A Soldier’s Play, the screen version of Pulitzer Prize-winning Off-Broadway play. The plot centers on an investigation into the murder of a Black Sergeant on a segregated Louisiana Army base, and while the KKK are initially suspected to be involved, it turns out that the murderer is none other than Washington’s Private Melvin Peterson. His motive is the indignity with which Sergeant Waters (Adolph Caesar) treats his underlings when he can’t transform the “lazy, shiftless” bunch into kind of soldiers who can earn their white counterparts’ respect, furious that he’s lost the opportunity to fight overseas. Director Norman Jewison viewed the film as a means of digging into racism of a less stereotypical sort. “The camera loved Washington,” the filmmaker later recalled. “He was intelligent, rebellious, totally confident, and spectacularly talented.”
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Cry Freedom (1987)
Image Credit: Universal/courtesy Everett Collection Washington’s fierty turn in A Soldier’s Story led him to the career changing turn as the heroic Steve Biko, the anti-apartheid activist beaten to death in police custody. Washington got his first Oscar nomination in the Richard Attenborough-directed film, and what the actor most admired about him, he said, was the difference he made in “changing Black people’s attitudes about themselves.” He had only “one taped interview” with Biko to draw on in prep, though he also benefited from in-person access to Donald Woods, the white newspaper editor played by Kevin Kline who took up Biko’s cause following his passing. So visceral was real-world reaction to this project tackling a lightning-rod topic that death threats were “constant” amidst production in Zimbabwe, and “a tremendous amount of security” was required around set at all times. Still, the experience was culturally “rich” and deeply meaningful to Washington, as it marked his first opportunity to experience Africa. “It was a homecoming of sorts,” he said, even if he didn’t know where “specifically” on the continent his ancestors were from.
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Glory (1989)
Image Credit: TriStar Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection The Civil War drama directed by Edward Zwick brought Washington his first Oscar. He played the fictional Private Trip, a runaway slave who takes up with an all-black Union regiment in Massachusetts. Trip was, in the actor’s mind, a “primitive man” and a “brilliant survivor,” who one day finds himself “in a place where he can make a difference,” speaking up against the unequal treatment of Black soldiers who are laying down their lives for their country, just like everyone else. The draw of the project was, in part, that it demonstrated what a critical role people of color played in helping the North win the war, which the actor felt is too often forgotten. His most powerful moment came when Captain Shaw (Matthew Broderick) ordered Trip whipped for deserting camp, unaware that he was only doing so to try to find a decent pair of boots. “I remember walking around before that scene, just praying and calling on the spirits of all the slaves, because I didn’t know how to play it. I was like, ‘Okay, fellas, just tell me what to do.’ And I went out there with an arrogance,” Washington remembers. “I had this attitude and this strength — it all came out of this meditation. It wasn’t calculated. It was organic.” Washington’s wordless display of defiance, shame and pride, and a single tear, is an enduring moment in cinema.
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Mo’ Better Blues (1990) / He Got Game (1998) / Inside Man (2006)
Image Credit: Everett collection One of Washington’s most enduring and fruitful collaborations has been that, spanning decades, with director Spike Lee, culminating in his epic turn in Malcolm X. The other three films gave Washington a trio of sharply drawn characters: the jazz trumpeter in Mo’ Better Blues who makes a mess of his life, the father in He Got Game who after a life spent in jail for an accidental murderer, gets temporary parole to get his estranged basketball prodigy son to attend the school of the governor’s choice; and an NYPD hostage negotiator looking to deescalate a heist gone wrong in the seamless thriller Inside Man. The actor recalls Mo’ Better as the first project where he “really began to experiment with improvising,” leading him over the years to come up with some of his most iconic lines off the cuff. Lee has said his relationship with Washington isn’t one requiring “a whole lot of talk,” though Washington has spoken out about the inspiration he’s taken from the filmmaker as he made his own way into directing, as someone who has sought out every opportunity to “put…African-Americans to work in this industry.”
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Malcolm X (1992)
Image Credit: Everett Collection After playing the polarizing Civil Rights leader in the off-Broadway When The Chickens Came Home To Roose, Washington relished the chance to tap into myriad chapters of his “unbelievable life,” from his time as a criminal and an inmate through to hid conversion to Islam, his rise to a position of huge national influence, and his assassination after being ostracized by the Nation of Islam. “What an opportunity for an actor, playing…a person who went through four or five different transformations. Gotta have skills. Which Denzel has,” says Lee, who considers his turn “one of the great performances of cinema.” In preparing to portray the potent orator, he took some inspiration from the preaching of his Pentecostal minister father. “Preaching is preaching, be it Malcolm X or… I don’t want to generalize and say ‘the black church,’ but there’s a certain style. And growing up with that, I understood it…” Washington said. “I remember certain cadences in the way my father would set up certain things. And when I would hear Malcolm X, I would say, Oh, he sets it up the same way. It’s a rhythm. It’s almost music.” Washington might well have added another Oscar to his mantle had the film ended with X’s devastating murder, but Lee won a contentious battle with Warner Bros and added a lengthy coda that hurt the film. “I would agree that there was a great two-and-a-half-hour movie in there,” Washington said later, adding Lee had ever right to his vision. “The movie’s director is the pilot. It’s his vision. For an actor, the time to worry about flying is when you’re on the ground. If you don’t want to fly with the director, don’t get on the plane..Would I have done the same thing? No.”
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Much Ado About Nothing (1993) / The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)
Image Credit: Everett Collection Washington’s first professional credit came as part of a Shakespeare in the Park production of Coriolanus. From the very beginnings of his career, he’s been enamored with Shakespeare, considering the works of The Bard to be “the ultimate challenge and the ultimate standard” for an actor. In the Kenneth Branagh-directed film plays Don Pedro, a nobleman visiting a friend in Italy who after being rejected by love interest Beatrice (Emma Thompson), sets about serving as a matchmaker for others. In the latter picture from Joel Coen, he put his stamp on the power-hungry Scottish King, bringing “45 years of training” to bear in nailing his soliloquies. Leading Macbeth on screen felt like a major moment for him, he said. Because “growing up…I certainly didn’t see anyone who looked like me doing [Shakespeare]. And so I love that now we have the opportunity to put…something onscreen…It’s sort of leading by example without having to preach it. It’s like, this is just what we do. We go to work.”
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The Pelican Brief (1993)
Image Credit: Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection. It was on this conspiracy thriller, based on the novel by John Grisham, that the actor forged a lifelong friendship with Julia Roberts, the Academy Award winner he refers to as “one of the most talented people I’ve ever worked with.” The Alan J. Pakula pic Washington plays Gray Grantham, the Washington Herald reporter who, with Roberts’ law student Darby Shaw, digs into a series of high-profile political assassinations. There was a bit of awkwardness surrounding the production, given murmurs of Grisham’s opposition to Washington’s casting. “It was a surprise, let’s just say, to all involved that Julia and Alan Pakula wanted me to play the part. People were not overjoyed. Alan was the director and Julia was the star. I was who they wanted and who they got.” But the actor nonetheless satisfied a craving for a bit of escapism through the project, having just previously grappled with the “heavy subject” of Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia. “It was a real departure… It was fun to just be able to run around,” Washington said. “And it’s an intelligent sort of a character, I guess, in the film. But still, basically being chased by the bad guys, and cars blowing up and stuff like that.” Preparing the actor for the part was time spent with real reporters at The Washington Post.
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Philadelphia (1993)
Image Credit: TriStar Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection The legal drama was unique in bringing to the mainstream the devastation of a cruel disease that at the time was focused mostly within the gay community. The Jonathan Demme-directed drama helped shape a national dialogue of huge import, as the first major studio title to take the HIV/AIDS epidemic as its subject. In one of his most compellingly nuanced performances, Washington portrays Joe Miller, the homophobic lawyer whose prejudice is called into question after taking on the wrongful termination suit of AIDS-afflicted, gay attorney Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks). Washington predicted near the time of the film’s release that “most people” would be able to relate to Miller to one degree or another, suggesting that it was for this reason that the film had the potential to be so powerful. “If they take the journey with [Joe] — and I think it’s an honest journey,” he said, maybe they’d “loosen up a bit,” in terms of the judgements they themselves passed on others. Interestingly enough, Washington prepared for the part by meeting with and studying the presentational tricks of Johnnie Cochran and Carl Douglas, the attorneys who were, at the time, leading the defense in O.J. Simpson’s murder trial. “Who knew that they would become more famous than me?” Washington joked with regard to the duo. While the film won Oscars for Bruce Springsteen’s haunting son, and another for Tom Hanks in the lead actor category, Washington might very well have won in the Best Supporting Actor category. Ed Limato, the legendary agent who was Washington’s rep until he died, advised against submitting in that category on the grounds that Washington was a leading man, and not some supporting player.
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Crimson Tide (1995)
Image Credit: Buena Vista Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection Washington came to his first of five films with Tony Scott given his desire to “be in there jousting” with “master” actor Gene Hackman. The action thriller centers on a battle hardened nuclear sub captain and his newbie first officer during a moment of heightened tension with the USSR. Conflicting orders are received, placing the skipper who wants to launch against his subordinate, who mounts a mutiny to keep him from pushing the button, until the second garbled message can be confirmed. Washington watched both Das Boot and the mutiny-themed Red River, at Scott’s behest, and learned the jargon from a retired captain of the USS Alabama who was set advisor. But for Washington, the thrill was going mano a mano with Hackman, giving him what De Niro and Pacino got in Heat and Cruise with Newman and Dustin Hoffman. “I’d sit there sometimes and they’d almost have to go, ‘Denzel, your line.’ I was watching one of the great actors of all time.”
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Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)
Image Credit: TriStar/courtesy Everett Collection When the actor was approached for this noir thriller from filmmaker Carl Franklin, based on Walter Mosley’s novel, he responded to how “different” it felt from other projects he’d come across. “It was scary. It was odd,” Washington said. “There was a certain realism about it, but it was also surreal.” He starred opposite Jennifer Beals, Tom Sizemore, and an up-and-coming Don Cheadle as WWII vet Easy Rawlins, an everyman in 1948 L.A. who gets in over his head when he takes on an assignment as a private eye. “I think it’s very fascinating, the time period and where it takes place,” said Washington. “We’ve never seen a film about life in South Central Los Angeles in the ‘40s. We haven’t even seen a film about the ‘40s in a while, and I think that Carl has crafted a very, very good mystery.” Franklin sparked to the exploration of the Black experience in America between the end of the Second World War and the start of the Civil Rights Movement. “I love film noir, but this film is really social realism married to film noir,” said the writer-director. “It’s about people I know, people I grew up with.” While the pic was critically acclaimed and continues to resonate today, it was a box office disappointment, which meant that plans for further Easy Rawlins films based on Mosley’s novels went out the window.
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Courage Under Fire (1996)
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox Film Reteamed with Glory helmer Zwick, Courage Under Fire was first to address the Gulf War, which had wrapped up just a few years prior. Washington tapped the internal conflict of Lieutenant Colonel Nathaniel Serling, who is called to judge the valor of downed rescue helicopter pilot Karen Walden (Meg Ryan) while struggling to come to terms with a mistake he made overseas that cost a friend his life. Serling is “slowly destroying himself, Washington explained, because he was never afforded the chance to “tell the truth” about what happened when he was reassigned to a desk job. Washington met with a lot of soldiers filled with regret for losing men, and feeling complicit it happened on their watch. Washington was joined by Matt Damon and told Zwick as he watched his portrayal of the gaunt drug addicted army medic, “I think I better raise my game.”
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The Preacher’s Wife (1996)
Image Credit: Buena Vista/courtesy Everett Collection Washington’s Mundy Lane developed this Penny Marshall film, based on 1947’s The Bishop’s Wife. In one of his few purely comedic performances, Washington plays Dudley, an angel who comes to Earth to help a preacher Courtney B. Vance) save his church and family, only to fall in love with his wife (Whitney Houston). The actor relished the chance to tell “a sweet, funny uplifting, positive Christmas story,” which spoke to his family and religious values, at the same time enjoying “a concert every night for free” from Houston. This was her followup to The Bodyguard, when Houston was at her peak playing the head of a choir. If Washington’s resume is more so filled with intense, dramatic performances, he’s admitted that, from his point of view, comedies speak more to who he is as a person. “I think that this kind of role is closer to who I am, or doing something with more humor is actually closer to who I am,” he said. “People that knew me growing up were more surprised by the other kinds of work that I’ve done, the more serious stuff.”
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The Hurricane (1999)
Image Credit: Universal/courtesy Everett Collection Washingon was a tour de force as Rubin “The Hurricane” Carter, the former middleweight boxer wrongly convicted of a triple murder in a Paterson, New Jersey bar. Washington threw himself into the task of making himself convincing as a boxing champ. “I would run six miles, have breakfast, train two hours lifting and then work with the stunt guys for three or four more house,” he said. “I’d stay in the ring all day doing choreography with them. I was doing it five days a week. I was strong and went down to 176 pounds.” While he worked with Carter, Washington was reluctant to call him, especially after Carter told him, “If you don’t get this right, Denzel, I’m a-gonna come and see ya.” Carter was pleased.
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Remember the Titans (2000)
Image Credit: Walt Disney Co./Courtesy Everett Collection Remember the Titans, Washington’s second sports drama is based on the true story of coach Herman Boone and his attempt to integrate a high school football team in Virginia during its first season following racial integration. The late Gregory Allen Howard, who wrote the screenplay, said that Denzel was initially unsure about signing on to the pic but was eventually persuaded by his wife, Pauletta. “Denzel walked onto that set, and I was like, ‘Oh, right. That’s what a movie star is,’” director Boaz Yakin said. “You literally feel the air bending around him. It’s really quite something to see.” A premiere for the pic was held at the Rose Bowl in LA, followed by a second screening at the White House, attended by President Bill Clinton and Rev. Jesse Jackson. The film grossed over $100 million and has enjoyed an enduring legacy in Hollywood and beyond. In 2008, when Barack Obama ended his presidential victory speech in Chicago with his signature “May God bless America,” the heavy horns of the Remember the Titans score played behind him.
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Training Day (2001)
Image Credit: Everett Collection One of Washington’s most ferocious and yet nuanced films, Training Day won him his second Academy Award in his first collaboration with Equalizer director Antoine Fuqua. Washington plays a seasoned LAPD narcotics officer showing the ropes to a new officer (Ethan Hawke). In 24 hours spent in the gang-ridden neighborhoods of LA, the young cop can’t decide if he should admire his mentor or fear him. Until it is clear that it is the latter. Washington lets loose with improvised lines like likending his character to King Kong. “The King Kong moment came out of Denzel,” Fuqua recalled. “I remember that moment because we were doing the scene, and he just started going off. I remember looking at the cameraman and saying, ‘I hope you got that because I don’t think we’re going to get that again.’” The result was a magical Oscar night for Washington, whose mentor Sidney Poitier was honored on a night when Halle Berry also won, making it the first time Black performers won in the lead categories. In his acceptance speech, he acknowledged Poitier as someone of incomparable accomplishment that he always was and always will be “chasing.”
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Antwone Fisher (2002)
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox Washington stepped behind the camera for the first time with this fact-based drama that starred Derek Luke. Washington played the psychiatrist who counsels Luke’s eponymous sailor as he grapples with mental trauma. It gave Washington the chance to look beyond the singular focus he brought to roles as an actor, and to share his gifts with his young cast. “It’s enough just to direct the first time out you know. And to have to act and direct — that was very difficult,” Washington said after the film was released. The screenplay was penned by the real-life Fisher, who relayed his compelling life story to the thesp’s producing partner Todd Black while working as a security guard on the Sony lot. After working his way through 40-plus drafts, he sold the rights to his story to Fox. “If I lived for a thousand years, I could never thank Denzel enough for what he did for me,” Fisher said.
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Man on Fire (2004)
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox Who better to play the title character than Washington, who portrayed a former mercenary haunted by past misdeeds who finds some redemption in bodyguarding the young daughter of wealthy parents in Mexico, where kidnappings are rampant. Washington’s scenes opposite young Dakota Fanning — they reteamed in The Equalizer 3 — set up the central plot. His determination to find everyone involved in the kidnap gone wrong which left his young client dead and himself seriously injured. Stylishly shot by Tony Scott, who said of his collaborations with Washington, “More than any other actor, he always surprises him with his performances. He always manages to pull out a different aspect of Denzel. On Pelham, he was the guy next door out of his depth. And then you look at Man on Fire, and he was this capable but complicated CIA agent. He’s able to never repeat himself.” How Washington didn’t even get nominated much less win, is a mystery for the ages.
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American Gangster (2007)
Image Credit: Universal/courtesy Everett Collection Washington got another mano a mano with a great actor opposite Russell Crowe in the Ridley Scott-directed American Gangster. He played Frank Lucas, the drug lord who smuggled heroin from Vietnam to Harlem in the caskets of American soldiers killed in action. The film began with Antoine Fuqua, fell apart, and was reassembled as a smaller budget. Washington insisted that he wouldn’t play Lucas in the film unless the Harlem murderer and drug trafficker was shown to be paying for his crimes. Lucas cooperated and took down corrupt cops in the process. “When I met Frank, I really understood what I saw as the arc of the character,” Washington said. “He wears nice clothes and drives fancy cars and all that, so if that means glorifying it, I guess that’s the case. But for me, I was looking at the arc of the character, and he don’t look that glorious right now.” Lucas went to prison for his crimes.
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The Great Debaters (2007)
Image Credit: MGM/courtesy Everett Collection In his second directorial outing, Denzel led an ensemble cast including Forest Whitaker, Kimberly Elise, Nate Parker, and Gina Ravera, in the drama based on the true story of Melvin B. Tolson, a professor at Wiley College in Texas. Tolson in 1935 led students to form the school’s first debate team, which went on to challenge Harvard in the national championship. Following the film’s release, Denzel announced a $1 million gift to Wiley College, so they could re-establish their debate team.
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Flight (2012)
Image Credit: Paramount Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection Loosely inspired by a real-life Alaska Airlines crash, Flight featured another tour de force by Washington as William “Whip” Whitaker Sr., an alcoholic pilot who crash-lands a plane after a mechanical failure, saving nearly everyone on board. Although initially hailed as a Sully-style hero, investigators crack Whip’s story. Flight is the only project on which Washington has worked with Zemeckis. During an interview with Deadline surrounding its release, the actor said the film only managed to reach production after he and Zemeckis donated part of their salaries to the production pot. “It’s a tenth of my salary. You do the math,” he said. The film went on to take over $150 million at the global box office.
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The Equalizer (2014)
Image Credit: Scott Garfield/©Columbia Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection Based on the ’80s TV series, Washington’s Robert McCall intercedes on behalf of a young woman forced into prostitution by a Russian syndicate. By the time he’s through, the idiosyncratic former operative has wiped out the whole organization. At the time when he was brought onto the project by Fuqua, the script had no backstory for Washington’s character, so the thesp took it upon himself to create it, including the vigilante’s battle with obsessive-compulsive disorder. “I started reading about obsession and obsessive-compulsive behavior,” Washington shared. “I developed a back story for myself that whatever it was he used to do – and I’m glad we don’t say – caused an amount of damage or post-traumatic stress.” He also showed there are many ways in a hardware superstore to kill bad guys.
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Fences (2016)
Image Credit: David Lee/©Paramount Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection Adapted from August Wilson’s play, Fences put Washington in the director’s chair and reteamed him with Viola Davis. They won Tonys on Broadway for the drama, and Washington discovered Davis casting her memorably as the drug-addicted mother in Antwone Fisher. Fences is part of Wilson’s Pultizer-winning Pittsburgh Cycle of 10 plays that explore the African-American experience in each decade of the 20th century. Washingon came to revere Wilson’s work and became the keeper of the flame in other adaptations still taking shape. Washington told all members of the team that “the star of the movie is the screenplay and August Wilson’s words.” Said producer Todd Black: “What Denzel said to me, to Scott [Rudin], to all the actors, the cinematographer, and the production designer was, ‘Don’t make any decision without August Wilson’s words leading you to make that decision.’ Whatever you do, let the words inform your decision first. That’s what we all had to abide by.”
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Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020)
Image Credit: David Lee / © Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection Produced by Washington, Black and Dany Wolf, the George C. Wolfe was a fitting final showcase for the outsized acting talents of Chadwick Boseman, who got an Oscar nom but died after the Pittsburgh-shot film wrapped. Washington’s generosity came out during the public mourning period, when Howard U’s Phylicia Rashad said how Washingon paid the tab for Boseman and classmates for a summer program they were awarded at Oxford. “Imagine receiving the letter that your tuition for that summer was paid for and that your benefactor was none other than the dopest actor on the planet,” Boseman said of Denzel in 2019. Added the late actor: “There is no Black Panther without Denzel Washington. And not just because of me, but my whole cast – that generation – stands on your shoulders.”