“Maybe I’m good at this”: the exact moment Denzel Washington knew he wanted to be an actor
History will remember Denzel Washington as one of cinema’s greatest-ever actors, but he didn’t start out with the ironclad belief he was destined to reach the very top of the industry, carve out a legendary career spanning decades and deliver no small amount of greatness.
Even in his late 60s, Washington remains one of the few figures in Hollywood who can guarantee box office returns based on his name alone, with his habit of alternating between powerful prestige dramas and hard-hitting action thrillers turning him into that very rare name who exists as both an actor and a movie star at once.
In his formative years, though, Washington admitted that he’d have been more than happy simply making a living as a Broadway performer. It wasn’t until his college years that he even realised he might actually be able to make a living out of it, either, with an early turn treading the boards instilling in him the confidence that he wasn’t too shabby at the whole thespianism thing.
When asked by Oprah Winfrey if there was an exact moment where he knew beyond any doubt that acting was where his future lay, the two-time Academy Award winner singled out a period during his time studying acting at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City as being when the lightbulb went off in his head.
“When I was doing Othello in college,” he answered. “Everyone was coming out of the woodwork to see the show. I was so green, I would look right out at the audience just to see who was there! But I was like, ‘Wow, all these people showed up. Maybe I’m good at this’. So I had a drive to perfect the craft.”
His stardom was far from instantaneous, though, even if it didn’t take him very long to make a mark on cinema. Washington was 27 years old before he made his feature debut in 1981’s Carbon Coby, but he soon earned his first Oscar nomination for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ in Cry Freedom for what was only his fourth-ever big screen credit.
He landed his second nomination and first win two years later in the very same category in historical drama Glory, which was still only the seventh movie he’d ever been in. It was an impressive way to announce himself as a generational talent in the making, one that lit the touchpaper on a rapid ascent that quickly took him towards the upper echelons of the A-list.
Washington has refused to let go of that position ever since, and being a living legend is a far cry from the inexperienced student performing Othello who got an inkling that he might just have a shot at turning his higher education into a livilehood.
