How Denzel Washington avoided the ‘Oscars curse’: “It could have been awful for my career”
In 1990, a 36-year-old Denzel Washington reached the very pinnacle of the acting profession. At the Academy Awards, he was honoured with the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ prize, beating out the likes of Dan Aykroyd, Martin Landau, and the great Marlon Brando. He had won the award for playing the role of Private Silas Trip in the American Civil War movie Glory and now had the world at his feet. However, as history will tell you, winning an Oscar isn’t always a good thing.
A number of promising stars have fallen to the so-called ‘Oscars curse’. For some reason, finding big success – especially at an early age – can damage one’s career, establishing a level of hype that could never be matched. At this point in time, Washington wasn’t a proven commodity, so could have easily fallen into this trap. Thankfully, he had a plan.
In an interview with Playboy, Washington explained what he did almost immediately after winning the Oscar. “The night I won I went to Spago [a restaurant in California], and Joel Silver walked in and said, ‘We have to do something.’” he recalled. “Eight months later, I’m making Ricochet.”
Joel Silver is a movie producer with a list of hits a mile long. He’s put his weight behind franchises like ‘Predator’, ‘Die Hard’, and ‘The Matrix’, as well as one offs V for Vendetta, Commando, and Road House. He signed Washington up for his next film, the action thriller Ricochet. Directed by Russell Mulcahy, the recent honouree plays a policeman-turned-lawyer who must confront a criminal he put behind bars during his crime-busting days. The cast includes John Lithgow and Ice-T and was a reasonable success with fans. The important thing for Washington is that it kept his momentum up from his Oscar win.
The very next movie Washington made after Ricochet was Spike Lee’s Malcolm X, a role he is still strongly linked with to this day. The year after that, he made three films: Much Ado About Nothing, The Pelican Brief, and Philadelphia. A trio of heavy hitters. In 2002, 12 years after his first victory, Washington won yet another Oscar, this time in the ‘Best Actor’ category for his performance as a bent cop in Training Day.
Washington was asked during the interview why he thought the likes of Cuba Gooding Jr, Lou Gossett Jr, and Whoopi Goldberg had failed to land good parts after their Oscar wins. “I can’t say why, since I don’t know why they made the choices they made,” he confessed. “Whether they were money choices or artistic choices.” With regards to his own post-Oscar choice, he admitted that Ricochet could have led him down a similar path. “[It] wasn’t because I wanted to do an action movie or because I couldn’t get anything else,” he said of his reasons behind taking the job. “It could have been awful for my career, and 10 years later people might have been saying, ‘He won the Oscar then couldn’t get anything good.’ But that was just something I chose to do.”
Of course, Washington’s talent played a big part in why he didn’t succumb to the ‘Oscars curse’. However, talent only gets you so far. The star made savvy decisions that ensured he was constantly in the limelight following his win. If things had gone differently during this crucial period, we may not have the Denzel Washington we know and love today.
