Denzel Washington

Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. (born December 28, 1954) is an American actor, producer, and director.

In a 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.

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."

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.

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.

Returning to Fordham that fall with a renewed purpose, Washington enrolled at the Lincoln Center campus to study acting, where he was cast in the title roles in Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones and Shakespeare's Othello.

He then attended graduate school at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, California, where he stayed for one year before returning to New York to begin a professional acting career.

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.

He first came to prominence in the NBC medical drama series St. Elsewhere (1982–1988), and in the war film A Soldier's Story (1984).

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).

His other Oscar-nominated roles were in Cry Freedom (1987), Malcolm X (1992), The Hurricane (1999), Flight (2012), Fences (2016), Roman J. Israel, Esq. (2017) and The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021).

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.

Washington made his Broadway debut in Checkmates (1988).

Washington won Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor for his role as an American Civil War soldier in Glory (1989) and for Best Actor for playing a corrupt cop in Training Day (2001).

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.

That same year, he appeared in the film The Mighty Quinn; and in For Queen and Country, where he played the conflicted and disillusioned Reuben James, a British soldier who, despite a distinguished military career, returns to a civilian life where racism and inner city life lead to vigilantism and violence.

He established himself as a leading man with starring roles in Mo' Better Blues (1990), Mississippi Masala (1991), Philadelphia (1993), Courage Under Fire (1996), Remember the Titans (2000), Man on Fire (2004), Inside Man (2006), and American Gangster (2007).

In the summer of 1990, Washington had appeared in the title role of the Public Theater's production of William Shakespeare's Richard III.

Mel Gussow of The New York Times praised Washington as "an actor of range and intensity, is expert at projecting a feeling of controlled rage".

Washington directed and starred in the films Antwone Fisher (2002), The Great Debaters (2007), and Fences (2015).

He won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for starring in the Broadway revival of August Wilson's play Fences in 2010.

He starred in The Equalizer trilogy (2014–2023).

Washington has since returned to Broadway in the revivals of Lorraine Hansberry play A Raisin in the Sun (2014) and the Eugene O'Neill play The Iceman Cometh (2018).

He was honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2019, 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.

After training at the American Conservatory Theater, Washington began his career in theatre, acting in performances off-Broadway.

He later directed, produced, and starred in the film adaptation in 2016.