“Wow”: The performance that made Denzel Washington want to be an actor
Every kid dreams of being a professional athlete at one stage in their childhood, and despite going on to become one of the greatest actors in all of cinema, Denzel Washington was no different.
As a youngster, he initially harboured dreams of making it as an American football player, before playing college basketball in his student years. However, when he was first pushed in the direction of acting after working as the creative arts director at a summer camp, it was a path he ended up following the rest of his days.
Washington was only in his late teens when he began his professional career, and like many performers before and since, he spent his formative years on the stage. He was in his late 20s by the time he landed his big break with a recurring role on the medical drama St. Elsewhere in 1982, and he’d earn his first Academy Award nomination for Cry Freedom before he’d even played the leading role in a movie.
By his own admission, Washington never harboured dreams of cracking Hollywood when he was working his way up the ranks, if only for the fact the industry was hardly brimming with performers he could look up to and hope to emulate. Fittingly, then, it was a theatre performance that instilled him with new confidence, when he saw one of the greats strutting their stuff.
Telling Oprah Winfrey that he never dreamed of being a movie star, Washington explained why. “My background is in the theatre, and in the 1970s, I didn’t see anyone I wanted to be like,” he said. “Other than Sidney Poitier, there weren’t many African-American film stars.”
However, when he took up acting as a full-time vocation, his eyes were well and truly opened. “After I got into theatre at age 20, I saw James Earl Jones do Oedipus the King at St. John the Divine on 112th Street in Manhattan,” he continued. “And I was like, ‘Wow’. I sneaked into his dressing room and looked at his props and his rings while he was meeting people.”
Washington offered that even though “it was never my masterplan to go to Hollywood,” seeing Jones tear the house down, treading the boards encouraged him to believe that “one day I’ll make $650 a week and work on Broadway.” That was an entirely attainable goal at the time, but it goes without saying he went on to vastly exceed even his most far-fetched and wildest of dreams.
These days, Washington is a two-time Academy Award-winning legend who remains one of the very few stars in the business capable of opening a movie based entirely on his name alone, a far cry from his initial ambition to clear a few hundred a week.
