Denzel Washington | Biography, Movies, Macbeth, Oscar, & Facts | Britannica (2024)

Denzel Washington (born December 28, 1954, Mount Vernon, New York, U.S.) is an American actor celebrated for his engaging and powerful performances. Throughout his career he has been regularly praised by critics, and his consistent success at the box office helped to dispel the outdated perception that African American actors could not draw mainstream white audiences.

Early life and education

Washington is named after his father, who was a Pentecostal minister in the Church of God in Christ, Inc. His mother, Lennis Washington, was a beautician who owned and operated several salons. His parents divorced when he was 14 years old, and his mother sent him to a military boarding school in upstate New York for high school.

Washington enrolled at Fordham University, initially as a premed major but changed his focus to journalism before deciding to join the theater program, where he had lead roles in student productions of The Emperor Jones and Othello. After graduating with a B.A. in 1977, Washington pursued further acting studies at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, where he stayed for a year before moving back to New York City. He had several successful stage performances in these years, most notably in A Soldier’s Play, for which he shared an Obie Award for distinguished ensemble performance in 1982.

First years in Hollywood

Washington’s first film roles were in the TV movies Wilma (1977) and Flesh & Blood (1979). His regular screen debut was in the comedy Carbon Copy (1981). He first began to receive national attention for his work as Dr. Phillip Chandler on the popular television drama St. Elsewhere (1982–88). For the film Cry Freedom (1987), he portrayed South African activist Stephen Biko, and he received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor. Two years later he won the Oscar for best supporting actor for his performance as a formerly enslaved man fighting in the Union army in the American Civil War film Glory (1989).

Superstardom: Malcolm X and Training Day

Washington’s astonishing skill and range as an actor and his popular appeal as a leading man were firmly established in the 1990s. He gave memorable performances in the romantic comedy Mississippi Masala (1991), the Shakespearean comedy Much Ado About Nothing (1993), alongside Tom Hanks in the courtroom drama Philadelphia (1993), the hard-boiled mystery Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), and the military thriller Crimson Tide (1995). The latter was the first of several popular movies he made with director Tony Scott.

During this time he also frequently worked with director Spike Lee, starring in Mo’ Better Blues (1990), He Got Game (1998), and most significantly Malcolm X (1992). Portraying the civil rights activist Malcolm X, Washington gave a complex and powerful performance and earned an Academy Award nomination for best actor. He received a second best-actor nomination for his portrayal of boxer Rubin Carter in Norman Jewison’s The Hurricane (1999).

In Training Day (2001), Washington played a corrupt and violent police detective who is assigned a young police officer (Ethan Hawke) to teach. Washington’s menacing and charismatic performance earned him an Oscar for best actor, making him only the second African American actor (the first was Sidney Poitier) to win the award. After starring in director Jonathan Demme’s 2004 update of the 1962 thriller The Manchurian Candidate, Washington reteamed with Lee for the crime drama Inside Man (2006). He later appeared as a drug kingpin opposite Russell Crowe’s determined narcotics officer in American Gangster (2007) and as a dispatcher caught in the middle of a subway train hijacking in Scott’s The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009).

Later movies: The Book of Eli, Flight, and Roman J. Israel, Esq.

In 2010 Washington starred in the postapocalyptic action drama The Book of Eli and collaborated again with Scott on the action thriller Unstoppable. He subsequently portrayed a rogue CIA agent in South Africa in the spy thriller Safe House (2012) before giving an Oscar-nominated performance in Flight (2012) as a heroic airplane pilot hiding a substance-abuse problem. The action comedy 2 Guns, in which Washington was cast as a covert drug-enforcement operative, followed in 2013. After playing Robert McCall, a mysterious vigilante, in the action thriller The Equalizer (2014), Washington appeared in The Magnificent Seven (2016), a remake of the 1960 classic western.

In 2017 he starred in Roman J. Israel, Esq., portraying an idealistic Los Angeles lawyer who begins to question his principles. For his performance, Washington received his eighth Oscar nomination for acting. He then reprised his role as Robert McCall in The Equalizer 2 (2018). In the crime drama The Little Things (2021) he played a detective hunting a serial killer.

Also in 2021 Washington starred with Frances McDormand in The Tragedy of Macbeth, Joel Coen’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s play. Washington received an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of the titular character. By this time Washington was frequently being characterized as one of the most important film actors of all time, and in 2020 The New York Times named him the greatest actor of the 21st century, with the newspaper’s critic A.O. Scott writing that Washington is “beyond category: a screen titan who is also a subtle and sensitive craftsman, with serious old-school stage training and blazing movie-star presence.”

In 2024 Washington portrayed a ruthless weapons dealer and gladiator owner loosely based on the historical figure Macrinus in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II.

Additionally, Washington directed and appeared in the biographical films Antwone Fisher (2002), about a U.S. serviceman with a troubled past, and The Great Debaters (2007), which centers on an inspirational debate coach at an African American college in the 1930s. He also helmed A Journal for Jordan (2021), a drama based on a true story about a journalist’s romantic relationship with a soldier.

Stage work

In addition to his film work, Washington has continued to occasionally act onstage. He made his Broadway debut in 1988 in Ron Milner’s Checkmates. In 2005 he starred as Brutus in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Five years later he appeared in the Broadway revival of August Wilson’s Fences, a family drama set in the 1950s that explores issues of identity and racism. For his performance, Washington won a Tony Award in 2010. He later directed and starred in a film adaptation (2016) of the play, and his performance earned him an Oscar nomination. In 2018 he returned to Broadway as Hickey in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh.

Awards and honors

In 2016 Washington received the Cecil B. DeMille Award (a Golden Globe Award for “outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment”). He later was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom (2022) by Pres. Joe Biden.

Personal life

Washington married Pauletta Pearson in 1983, and the couple have four children. Their eldest child, John David Washington, is an acclaimed actor who notably starred in BlacKkKlansman (2018), directed by his father’s old collaborator, Spike Lee.