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by Dennis Hensley
It can be hard being Denzel Washington. Not hard in the way you or I think
of hard maybe, but sometimes it can challenging for the 45-year-old Oscar-winning actor to
do his job and get through the day. Take, for example, the first day of
shooting on his new film The Hurricane, a fact-based drama in which Washington
plays Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, the promising middleweight boxer who was
unjustly convicted of a triple murder and spent nearly 20 years in a New Jersey prison.
"The first shot we did was me coming out of Trenton State Penitentiary," recalls
Washington, relaxing after breakfast in a suite at L.A.'s Four Seasons Hotel. "Well,
the prison is in a neighborhood. Right across the street are people's houses and they
found out we were shooting the movie so they all came out. Well, the first time I walked
out of the prison, they reacted. Women were screaming and all that stuff. The feeling is
supposed to be me walking out after five years, being alone and thinking, 'Where am I
going,' yet there's 300 people standing over there and you could feel their energy. It was
kind of tricky."
Such
is the burden of being Hollywood's sexiest serious actor -- or should that be most serious
sex symbol? The fact is, few of Hollywood's
leading men can touch Washington when it comes to combining and-the-Oscar-goes-to acting
chops with is-it-hot-in-here-or-is-it me sex appeal.
Take for example, his
last film The Bone Collector, a serial killer yarn that was one of last fall's
bigger hits. Though the film itself received
mixed reviews, critics heaped praise on Washington, not only for the realism with which he
was able to portray a quadriplegic forensics expert, but also for the erotic tension he
stirred up with co-star Angelina Jolie. It's not every actor who can save
the day and sex up his co-star without getting out of bed. And unlike some leading men who
always seem to be playing some version of themselves -- Cary Grant and Robert Redford come
to mind -- Washington has been able to balance close-to-home, crowd-pleasing parts (The
Preacher's Wife, Crimson Tide) with roles that require him to trade his own persona
for someone else's (Malcolm X, Cry Freedom).
In no
film has Washington's seriously sexy duality been more pronounced than in The
Hurricane. In the early boxing sequences, he's
in better shape and showing more skin than ever before. Then, as the years in prison take
their toll, we start to see another Hurricane, this one graying, bespectacled and far from
fighting weight, yet oddly serene. Washington starts the film as a man
who has always traded on the physical and finishes it as a walking testament to the power
of the human mind. It's as if in the same movie
Washington's daring those who wish to pin him down as one or the other -- hunk or thesp --
to take their best shot.
For
9:00 in the morning, Washington is remarkably energetic and quick to laugh. Chalk it up,
he says, to fact that it's the first holiday in a couple of years he's been able to pig
out. "You see I'm wearing a big shirt now," he laughs, tugging at the tails of
his untucked, black button-down. Asked what his next project is, he smiles and says,
"Eggnog."
This
time last year, the very sight of a glass of eggnog was enough to send the star into
paroxysms of longing. The boxing sequences were shot last
January and by that time, Washington had been working with a boxing coach for over a year. "He had lost almost sixty
pounds," says the film's producer and screenwriter Armyan Bernstein. "When he pulled off that robe
(on the first day), there was a man who had spent a year dedicated to this movie." For his part, Washington is more
matter-of-fact about his transformation. "[Director] Norman [Jewison]
said to me, 'There's nothing I can do to help you,'" he recalls, "and I'm
convinced he said it to sort of tweak me into getting in shape."
His
preparation wasn't limited to hitting the gym. This, after all, was the first time
Washington was playing a living person and he wanted to take advantage of that fact. "Before we started shooting,
Rubin and I sat in a hotel room for five or six days and talked, or I should say he talked
and I listened," recalls Washington of the man who became a cause celébre and the
subject of a Bob Dylan song in the 70s. "After that, he was like, 'I trust
you.'" Still, Washington admits he was nervous to hear Carter's assessment of the
final product. "I got word from the director that he liked it and was moved so by the
time I actually talked to him I was able to act like I was cool."
But
then, Washington's never been the type of actor to phone it in. For The Bone Collector, he
consulted with dozens of paralyzed people, including Christopher Reeve. For Glory, in which he
played an embittered runaway slave, Washington happened upon a special place that helped
him find his character. "Not far from our hotel in
Savannah, where we were shooting, there were these three big curved things that looked
like single car garages," explains Washington. "One day, some of them were
empty, so I went up there and this old guy comes up to me and says, 'You know what those
are? This where they brought the slaves. This open square here is where they were sold.
You see all the holes in the wall? Those are from shackles.' Well, the old, old, old, old
hooks from the doors were still there so I broke one of them off and I took it. It was
weird because this guy just walked out of nowhere, and then he was gone. After that, I used to go in there to
rehearse and sort of vibe. But you had to wait for the cars to get out of there."
For
the same reason the public doesn't often think of Washington as the type of actor who
"throws himself" DeNiro-style into his parts, critics may not have given him the
credit some of his work would have earned a less comely actor. Though Tom Hanks (playing a man
dying of AIDS) nabbed the Oscar, it was Washington's performance his conflicted lawyer
that brought depth and ambiguity to Philadelphia. And in Carl Franklin's little seen
noir gem Devil in Blue Dress, Washington not only filled out a wife-beater T, but
made playing the reluctant yet noble investigator Easy Rawlins, look...well, easy. And Washington is one A-list star
whose résumé shows a remarkable lack of "take the paycheck and run" would-be
blockbusters. (Okay, there's one, the futuristic
flop Virtuosity).
Not
that Denzel Washington has gone without accolades.
He was nominated for an
Academy Award for Malcolm X and won the trophy for Best Supporting Actor in 1989
for Glory. "Coming off stage, I thought I was real calm and cool," he
recalls, when asked what he remembers about his victory, "and then I almost started
hyperventilating. Kevin Kline was in the wings, because he was about to present, and I was
like, 'Kevin, what happened? Did I just win?' He said, 'You're gone, aren't you?'"
Washington
seems to be taking the Oscar buzz for The Hurricane in stride (he's already be
nominated for a Golden Globe) but if he does win, at least he has an idea, from Kline's
offstage position, of how silly he looked the first time. It seems Washington, attending the
Oscars two years ago as a presenter, was waiting in the wings when Matt Damon and Ben
Affleck came offstage after winning their trophies for co-writing Good Will Hunting. "Matt got on the phone right
away, squatting down with the audience 10 feet behind him," laughs Washington.
"He said, 'I'm calling my girl.' Then he hugged me so hard he almost snapped my neck.
I was like, 'Okay, okay.'"
He may
be the epitome of a big Hollywood star now, but at heart, Washington will always think of
himself as a New Yorker. Born 45 years ago in Mount Vernon,
New York, to a beautician mother, Lennis, and a preacher father, Denzel, Sr., Washington
explains the etymology of his marquee-perfect moniker... "The doctor who delivered my
father was Dr. Denzel," says Washington, putting the accent on the first syllable.
"Around the house my mother would say, 'DEN-zel!' and we'd both show up so she said
to me, 'All right, from now on you're Den-ZEL.'" Washington didn't catch the acting
fever until his college days at Fordham University in Manhattan, where he started out
studying journalism but then segued into theater. After a year at San Francisco's
prestigious American Conservatory Theater, he returned to New York to begin hitting the
audition trail. He still remembers where he was when he learned that he got his first big
gig, the TV movie Wilma. "The last reading was on Madison Avenue, at about
81st Street," he recalls, "and when the director told me I got the part, I
calmly said, 'Thank you,' and then when I got outside, I took off running down Madison
Avenue. I just had to run."
It was
while making Wilma that Washington met his wife of 17 years, singer and actress
Paulette Pearson. The couple and their five children
make their home in the Hollywood hills, but apart from a well-stocked wine collection,
their life seems decidedly unglamorous. When his schedule allows, Washington
can be found coaching his son's football team or watching sports on the three TVs he has
set up in the basement. "My wife's always saying, 'He's
down in the hole and he's not coming up,'" laughs Washington.
Frequent
visits to his home state also help keep him grounded. "I just love everything about
New York," says the actor who spent many a summer night ignoring sirens and spitting
out moths while doing Shakespeare in the Park. "I live in L.A., but my heart is in
New York. I like sitting at Union Square by Coffee Shop and watching people. New Yorker's
don't care [who I am] and I love that. I can sort of blend in and be like I used to
be." Washington's next film is Remember
the Titans, about a black football coach in Virginia dealing with the integration of
his school. Sounds like the kind of
thought-provoking, socially-relevant material Washington does best. And he's sure to look hot in the
coach uniform.
Whether
posterity treats Washington as a great actor who just happened to be easy on the eyes or
the other way around remains to be seen. As for Washington himself, he seems
to have given up worrying about it. "I think movies belong to the
people," he says. "I do what I had to do, and
once you're done with it, there it is. Sometimes, movies that I'd like to forget about,
someone will come up and say, 'Oh man, I loved where you jumped off the building.' I'll
say, 'What about, I don't know, Philadelphia?' and they'll go, 'Oh yeah, I guess
that was good too.' A good buddy of mine is a top doctor and he's like, 'Denzel, life is
hard enough. By the time I get to the movies, I don't want to deal with issues. I just
want to escape.'"
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