The groundbreaking 1991 movie Denzel Washington wanted nothing to do with: “I had to pass”
The best actors know their worth, and since he’s both one of the best actors of his generation and one of the highest-paid stars in Hollywood, Denzel Washington has clearly mastered the art of negotiation.
Most of the time, the two-time Academy Award winner won’t get out of bed for less than $20 million, and when you look at his consistent track record of box office success that dates back three decades, you can understand why eight figures is often the minimum it’ll take to get him to sign on the dotted line.
Of course, it hasn’t always been that way, but once Washington had established himself as someone destined for the very top, certain parts were suddenly beneath him. That’s not a bad thing, because anyone worth their salt who was in a position to handpick their roles would only settle for the best, but it did rob him of the chance to appear in one of modern cinema’s most influential movies.
He was already an Oscar nominee for Cry Freedom, so it wasn’t as if he was an unknown, but the six pictures that Washington starred in between December 1989 and November 1992 pushed him over the top. Maybe not Heart Condition, because it’s the worst thing he’s ever been in, but the rest? Pretty much.
The star won an Oscar for Glory, teamed up with Spike Lee for the first time in Mo’ Better Blues, made his debut as an action hero in Ricochet, tried his hand at playing a romantic lead in Mississippi Masala, and gave what might be the finest performance of his professional life, earning another Oscar nod, for Malcolm X.
By that point, Washington was undeniable. And yet, you can’t help but wonder what might have been if he’d accepted James Cameron’s offer to play Miles Dyson in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. It’s a relatively small role, sure, but a pivotal one nonetheless, with the character assisting Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger in their plan to prevent Skynet from ushering in the apocalypse.
As everyone knows, Cameron’s sequel cleared half a billion dollars at the box office, became the highest-grossing R-rated release of all time, cemented its reputation as one of the best action movies, sci-fi films, and sequels ever made, and heralded the incoming CGI revolution with its innovative, pioneering, and groundbreaking visual effects.
Hindsight is always 20/20, but Washington didn’t even regret turning down such an important picture because he didn’t feel like the writing gave him a lot to work with. “No offence to Jim Cameron,” he prefaced, shortly before Ricochet was released in October 1991, two months after T2. “But when I read the script, I thought, ‘All he does is look scared and sweat’. I had to pass.”
He’s got a point, since Joe Morton does do an awful lot of sweating during his scant screentime, and he does plenty of looking scared, too, but that’s to be expected when he discovers he’s accidentally responsible for the end of humanity as everyone knows it, never mind the folks that are trying to kill him. Still, it wasn’t good enough for Washington.
