Denzel Washington

His father was an ordained Pentecostal minister who also worked for the city water department. His mother ran a beauty parlour in Mount Vernon. When he was 14 his parents divorced and his mother sent him to a military academy upstate, a decision he says changed his life: the friends he ran with did perhaps 40 years between them in the penitentiary. He finished high school in Daytona Beach, went to Fordham, played guard under P. J. Carlesimo, and could not settle on a major. He took a semester off and ran the creative arts programme at a YMCA camp in Connecticut. He did a staff talent show for the campers, a colleague told him to try acting, and he went back to Fordham to study it.

Fordham cast him in the title roles of The Emperor Jones and Othello, he spent a year at the American Conservatory Theater, and he made his screen debut in a 1977 television film about Wilma Rudolph. An Obie followed for A Soldier's Play, then six years as Dr. Phillip Chandler on St. Elsewhere. A first Academy Award nomination came for playing Steve Biko in Cry Freedom, the award itself for Glory in 1989, and Best Actor for Training Day in 2001, making him the second Black actor to take that category after Sidney Poitier. Nine acting nominations in all, through Malcolm X, The Hurricane, Flight, Fences, Roman J. Israel, Esq. and The Tragedy of Macbeth. He has directed four films. He won a Tony for Fences in 2010 and went back to Broadway as Othello in 2025.

He has said since 1999 that part of him thinks he is supposed to preach, and that he may still be compromising. He has been national spokesman for the Boys and Girls Clubs since 1993 and on the board since 1995, gave 2.5 million dollars toward a new West Angeles Church of God in Christ building, a million to Nelson Mandela's Children's Fund, a million to revive the Wiley College debate team, and two million to Fordham for an endowed theatre chair. In December 2024 he was baptised and took a minister's licence at a Church of God in Christ congregation in Harlem. The role that finally won him Best Actor was a corrupt Los Angeles narcotics detective, whom Roger Ebert called a monster from a horror film, unkillable and implacable. Malcolm X and Rubin Carter had not been enough.

He is 71 and still working, so the reckoning has not happened and the record is open. The New York Times in 2020 called him the greatest actor of the century. He has the Cecil B. DeMille Award from 2016, the AFI life achievement award from 2019, the Presidential Medal of Freedom from January 2025 and an honorary Palme d'Or from Cannes that May. His films have taken more than 5.1 billion dollars worldwide. Fordham has a Denzel Washington Chair that brings in a working playwright or actor each year. His son Malcolm directed The Piano Lesson in 2024 with his brother John David in it. He has been announced for a third Black Panther and cast as Hannibal.

Denzel Washington's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• Glory film
  Best Supporting Actor 1989
• Malcolm X film
  Nominated for Best Actor 1992
• Training Day film
  Best Actor, for a corrupt Los Angeles narcotics detective 2001
• Antwone Fisher film
  His first film as director 2002
• Fences film
  Directed and starred, six years after the Broadway revival that won him a Tony 2016
• Highest 2 Lowest film
  A fifth film with Spike Lee, remaking Kurosawa's High and Low 2025

• 1969 aged ~15 His parents divorce and his mother sends him to military school at New Windsor
• 1977 aged ~23 Graduates from Fordham and makes his screen debut in the television film Wilma He met Pauletta Pearson on that set.
• November 20, 1981 aged 26 A Soldier's Play opens off-Broadway He shared an Obie for it the following year.
• 1982 aged ~28 Cast as Dr. Phillip Chandler on St. Elsewhere, where he stayed six years
• June 25, 1983 aged 28 Marries Pauletta Pearson
• March 26, 1990 aged 35 Wins Best Supporting Actor for Glory
• March 24, 2002 aged 47 Wins Best Actor for Training Day The second Black actor to take the category, after Sidney Poitier.
• June 13, 2010 aged 55 Wins the Tony for Best Actor in a Play for Fences
• January 2025 aged 70 Receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom An honorary Palme d'Or followed at Cannes in May, at the premiere of Highest 2 Lowest.

• Sidney Poitier 1927–2022
  First Black actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, breaking barriers in Hollywood. the only Black actor to win Best Actor before him
• August Wilson 1945–2005
  Playwright whose ten-play cycle chronicled African American life across the twentieth century. whose Fences he played on stage and then filmed
• Malcolm X 1925–1965
  Civil-rights leader whose critique of racism and advocacy of Black dignity reshaped American political thought. played him in 1992
• Morgan Freeman b. 1937
  Academy Award-winning actor whose commanding voice and gravitas made him a beloved cultural figure. co-starred in Glory