All All. Sign In. List activity. Denzel Washington. Actor Producer Director Fences Denzel Hayes Washington, Jr. He is the middle of three children of a beautician mother, Lennis, from Georgia, and a Pentecostal minister father, Denzel Washington, Sr. After graduating from high school, Denzel enrolled at Fordham University, intent on a career in journalism. However, he caught the acting bug while appearing in student drama productions and, upon graduation, he moved to San Francisco and enrolled at the American Conservatory Theater.
He left A. His first paid acting role was in a summer stock theater stage production in St. Mary's City, Maryland. The play was "Wings of the Morning", which is about the founding of the colony of Maryland now the state of Maryland and the early days of the Maryland colonial assembly a legislative body. He played the part of a real historical character, Mathias Da Sousa, although much of the dialogue was created.
Afterwards he began to pursue screen roles in earnest. With his acting versatility and powerful presence, he had no difficulty finding work in numerous television productions.
He made his first big screen appearance in Carbon Copy with George Segal. Through the s, he worked in both movies and television and was chosen for the plum role of Dr. Elsewhere , a role that he would play for six years. In , his film career began to take precedence when he won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Tripp, the runaway slave in Edward Zwick 's powerful historical masterpiece Glory Washington has received much critical acclaim for his film work since the s, including his portrayals of real-life figures such as South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko in Cry Freedom , Muslim minister and human rights activist Malcolm X in Malcolm X , boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter in The Hurricane , football coach Herman Boone in Remember the Titans , poet and educator Melvin B.
Malcolm X and The Hurricane garnered him Oscar nominations for Best Actor, before he finally won that statuette in for his lead role in Training Day He continued to define his onscreen persona as the tough, no-nonsense hero through the s in films like Out of Time , Man on Fire , Inside Man , and The Taking of Pelham Cerebral and meticulous in his film work, he made his debut as a director with Antwone Fisher ; he also directed The Great Debaters and Fences Later that year, he starred as a veteran railroad engineer in the action film Unstoppable , about an unmanned, half-mile-long runaway freight train carrying dangerous cargo.
