The moment Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington went head to head on set: “This is my arena”
When actors step onto a movie set for a one-on-one scene with a legendary star they likely grew up idolising, they will almost certainly feel nervous. After all, they’re only human, and acting opposite someone whose work you have admired from afar for years is both exciting and intimidating. Anyone would want to give a good account of themselves and not be exposed as out of their depth at that level.
However, Denzel Washington is a vastly different kettle of fish from most actors. Indeed, throughout his career, it’s been far more likely that the actor performing opposite him is the one who will be a bundle of nerves. Washington has a reputation as a force of nature who doesn’t mollycoddle his co-stars, and his supreme confidence can sometimes make other actors feel overawed by him.
“Denzel is so powerful that you could get blown out,” laughed Spike Lee, who has directed Washington in four films, including the Oscar-nominated Malcolm X. “If there are confrontational scenes and one actor blows somebody off the screen, it’s like watching a sports event where one team just kills another, they get beat by 50 points.” With a chuckle, he added, “Even if that’s your team, you want to see some competitiveness…It’s a boxing match. Toe to toe.”
Perhaps Washington developed this aura of intimidation over the years because he always wanted the upper hand over a scene partner. Maybe he never thinks about it at all, but he does his job so astonishingly that it can make some actors freeze up. Whatever the case, Washington certainly doesn’t intimidate his co-stars to make up for the fact that he was himself intimidated by a more established star while on the rise in Hollywood. In fact, he happily went head-to-head with Gene Hackman once and claimed he didn’t feel nervous in the slightest.
In Tony Scott’s tense, sweaty, and thrilling submarine drama Crimson Tide, Washington and Hackman circle each other for much of the runtime like two prizefighters getting ready to unleash hell. When it finally comes, though, and they wage verbal war over who should have command of the submarine, it’s one of the most explosively heart-racing confrontations of ’90s cinema. It’s the kind of scene that any actor would be proud to hang their hat on, although Washington claimed it was little more than another day at the office.
“I don’t think I’ve been intimidated by another actor,” Washington mused when asked about Hackman. “I get more nervous around sports figures than actors, maybe because I’ve been doing this a long time. This is my arena, if you will, so I feel like whoever walks in the gym, let’s go at it.”
To his credit, Washington stressed that he considered Hackman “one of the masters,” and that he deeply respected the iconic French Connection star. He also hinted that his lack of nerves may have been helped by the fact that he rehearsed with Hackman a decade earlier on a film called Power in which they didn’t actually share any scenes, but got to know each other a little. Either way, Washington was adamant, “It was exciting. It wasn’t scary, it was good, because I knew I was gonna learn something, you know.”
Indeed, perhaps that’s how modern actors duelling with Washington should approach their scenes, as opportunities to sit under the learning tree with an (admittedly pretty darn intimidating) master.
