The directors Denzel Washington enjoyed working with the most
Denzel Washington has worked with some of the most iconic filmmakers over the last few decades and, in the process, become one of the most admired and adored actors on the planet, cementing himself as a box office powerhouse. However, when the actor was asked which directors he enjoyed working with the most, his answer came as something of a surprise.
The list of directors the actor has collaborated with over the years is impressive. Robert Zemeckis, who helmed some beloved classics such as Forrest Gump and Back To The Future, cast Washington in his biopic Flight, the story of an alcoholic pilot who successfully saves a plane disaster.
Washington also played Frank Lucas, a New York drug lord running a heroin empire during the 1970s and ’80s in Ridley Scott’s American Gangster. With that, he starred in Kenneth Branagh’s Shakespeare adaptation, Much Ado About Nothing, and most recently played the lead in Joel Coen’s murky and hypnotic The Tragedy of Macbeth.
However, it’s Washington’s endeavours into the action movie genre that he’s probably most synonymous with, and judging by the directors he acknowledged, these may be the roles he relishes playing the most.
Washington, answering fan questions on Reddit while promoting his 2016 movie Fences, cites three directors that he particularly loved working with. Firstly, the visionary American writer and director Spike Lee. The pair have collaborated four times over the course of their illustrious careers, most famously when Washington played the lead in Lee’s Malcolm X in 1992, which landed the actor an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Actor’. The two creatives also collaborated on the lesser-known but equally great Mo’ Better Blues that same year, kickstarting one of the most prolific actor-director duos in modern cinema. Subsequently, Washington went on to star in He Got Game in 1998 and the hugely popular and successful Inside Man in 2006.
Another director Washington pays homage to is Antoine Fuqua. The actor played Alonzo Harris, a Los Angeles police officer with questionable methods who has taken a new recruit (Ethan Hawke) under his wing, showing him the ropes, in Fuqua’s crime thriller Training Day. It’s a searing performance from Washington, and the film quickly became a cult classic that propelled Fuqua into the mainstream as a new voice in American cinema. What followed was a further five collaborations. Washington was cast in Fuqua’s gun-slinging western The Magnificent Seven, an adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 epic. Most recently, however, the pair have worked together on the popular The Equalizer trilogy, in which Washington plays a cool, calm, and collected vigilante killer who outsmarts the bad guys and deals with them using imaginative and incredibly violent methods.
Finally, Washington says he particularly enjoyed the films he made alongside Tony Scott. Scott tragically died in 2012 at 68, but his contribution to cinema will live on forever, having directed classics such as Top Gun, True Romance, and Beverly Hills Cop II. Washington starred in five Scott pictures, some of them his most famous and successful movies to date.
Take yourself back to the early 2000s, and a staple on every teenager’s DVD shelf was Man on Fire, Crimson Tide, Deja Vu, and The Taking of Pelham 123 – all of which were equally embraced by audiences and by the box office alike. Scott, with his powerful command of imagery, established himself as one of the best action-movie directors of the decade, and Washington became a household name within the genre.
Whether it’s big explosion, guns blazing, all-out action cinema, or more serious character-driven human dramas, Washington has taken on challenging roles and captivated audiences across the board. But the collaborators he’s acknowledged are telling and perhaps allude to the type of cinema that resonates with the actor most. Interestingly, it’s reported Washington is set to work again with Antoine Fuqua on his latest project, Hannibal, about the Carthaginian General Hannibal, so it would seem there is no sign of the actor’s action-thriller roles leaving us anytime soon.
