Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. (born December 28, 1954) is an American actor and film producer. Known for his dramatic roles on stage and screen, he has received numerous accolades including two Academy Awards, an Actor Award, two Golden Globes, two Silver Bears and a Tony Award, as well as nominations for a Grammy Award and two Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2020, The New York Times named Washington the greatest actor of the 21st century. He has also been honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Award (2016), AFI Life Achievement Award (2019) the Honorary Palme d'Or (2025), and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2025). Films in which he has appeared have grossed over $5.1 billion worldwide.
After training at the American Conservatory Theater, Washington began his career in theater, acting in performances off-Broadway. He first came to prominence in the NBC medical drama series St. Elsewhere (1982–1988), and in the war film A Soldier's Story (1984). Washington won Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor for playing an American Civil War soldier in the war drama Glory (1989), and for Best Actor for playing a corrupt police officer in the crime thriller Training Day (2001). He was nominated for further Academy Awards for his roles in Cry Freedom (1987), Malcolm X (1992), The Hurricane (1999), Flight (2012), Fences (2016), Roman J. Israel, Esq. (2017), and The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021).
Washington has also starred in the films The Pelican Brief, Philadelphia (both 1993); Crimson Tide, Devil in a Blue Dress (both 1995); He Got Game (1998); Remember the Titans (2000); Man on Fire (2004); Déjà Vu, Inside Man (both 2006); American Gangster (2007); Unstoppable, The Book of Eli (both 2010); The Equalizer trilogy (2014–2023), Gladiator II (2024), and Highest 2 Lowest (2025). Washington has also directed the films Antwone Fisher (2002), The Great Debaters (2007), Fences (2016), and A Journal for Jordan (2021).
On stage, Washington appeared in The Public Theater productions of Coriolanus (1979) and The Tragedy of Richard III (1990). He made his Broadway debut in the Ron Milner play Checkmates (1988). He won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his role as a disillusioned working class father in the Broadway revival of August Wilson's play Fences (2010). He also performed in the Broadway revivals of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (2005) and Othello (2025), Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun (2014), and Eugene O'Neill's play The Iceman Cometh (2018).
Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. was born on December 28, 1954, in Mount Vernon, New York, a suburb of New York City. His mother, Lennis "Lynne" Lowe, was a beauty parlor owner born in Georgia and partly raised in Harlem, New York. His father, Denzel Hayes Washington Sr., a native of Buckingham County, Virginia, was an ordained Pentecostal minister who also worked for the New York City Water Department and a local S. Klein department store. Washington said his name was originally pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable. However, his mother started placing the emphasis on the second syllable, so that when she called him, he would respond and not his father.
Washington attended Pennington-Grimes Elementary School in Mount Vernon until 1968. When he was 14, his parents divorced and his mother sent him to Oakland Military Academy, a private preparatory school in New Windsor, New York. Washington later said that attending the academy kept him off the streets and out of prison. After the academy, he attended Mainland High School in Daytona Beach, Florida, from 1970 to 1971.
After high school, Washington attended Fordham University, where he played college basketball under coach P. J. Carlesimo. During a period of indecision about which major to study, he took a semester off and subsequently worked as the creative arts director of an overnight summer camp held at Camp Sloane YMCA in Lakeville, Connecticut. After he participated in a staff talent show, one of his colleagues suggested that he try acting. Upon his return to Fordham, Washington began studying acting at the university's Lincoln Center, where he played the leading roles in Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones and Shakespeare's Othello. After graduating from Fordham with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Drama and Journalism in 1977, he enrolled in graduate school at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, California, where he studied for a year before returning to New York to begin a professional acting career.
1976–1989: Early roles and rise to prominence
Washington spent the summer of 1976 in St. Mary's City, Maryland, in summer stock theater performing Wings of the Morning, the Maryland State play, which was written for him by incorporating an African-American character/narrator based loosely on the historical figure from early colonial Maryland, Mathias de Sousa.
Shortly after graduating from Fordham, Washington made his screen acting debut in the 1977 made-for-television film Wilma, which was a docudrama about sprinter Wilma Rudolph, and made his first Hollywood appearance in the 1981 film Carbon Copy. He shared a 1982 Distinguished Ensemble Performance Obie Award for playing Private First Class Melvin Peterson in the Off-Broadway Negro Ensemble Company production A Soldier's Play which premiered November 20, 1981.
A major career break came when he starred as Dr. Phillip Chandler in NBC's television hospital drama St. Elsewhere, which ran from 1982 to 1988. He was one of only a few African-American actors to appear on the series for its entire six-year run. He also appeared in several television, motion picture and stage roles, such as the films A Soldier's Story (1984), Hard Lessons (1986) and Power (1986). In 1987, he starred as South African anti-apartheid political activist Stephen Biko in Richard Attenborough's Cry Freedom, for which he received his first Academy Award nomination.
In 1989, Washington won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of a defiant and self-possessed ex-slave Civil War soldier in the film Glory. That same year, he appeared in the film The Mighty Quinn; and in For Queen and Country, where he played the conflicted and disillusioned Reuben James, a British soldier who, despite a distinguished military career, returns to a civilian life where racism and inner-city life lead to vigilantism and violence.
1990–1999: Hollywood stardom and acclaim
In the summer of 1990, Washington had appeared in the title role of the Public Theater's production of William Shakespeare's Richard III. Mel Gussow of The New York Times praised Washington as "an actor of range and intensity, is expert at projecting a feeling of controlled rage". Also that year, Washington starred as Bleek Gilliam in the Spike Lee film Mo' Better Blues. Charles Murray of Empire praised Washington's performance as a "taut portrayal of the driven musician" and "like all Lee’s film, Mo’ Better Blues is a real ensemble piece, and the standard of the performances is uniformly excellent: but Washington [and] Lee deserve extra plaudits." In 1991, he starred as Demetrius Williams in the Mira Nair directed romantic drama Mississippi Masala opposite Sarita Choudhury. Set primarily in rural Mississippi, the film explores interracial romance between African Americans and Indian Americans. Critic Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times praised the chemistry of the two leads writing, "Washington is an actor of immense and natural charm, and he makes a good match with Sarita Choudhury".
Washington was reunited with Lee to play one of his most critically acclaimed roles, the title character of the historical epic Malcolm X (1992). The New York Times gave the film its Critic's Pick with Vincent Canby declaring, "In Denzel Washington it also has a fine actor who does for "Malcolm X" what Ben Kingsley did for "Gandhi." Mr. Washington not only looks the part, but he also has the psychological heft, the intelligence and the reserve to give the film the dramatic excitement". His performance as the Black nationalist leader earned him his third Academy Award nomination, the first time in the Lead Actor category. Also that year, he established the production company Mundy Lane Entertainment. The next year, he played the lawyer defending a gay man with AIDS played by Tom Hanks in the Jonathan Demme film Philadelphia (1993). Sight & Sound wrote, "Casting Washington in the lead guaranteed the film the black audience that otherwise might not have had much interest in the problems of a rich white homosexual with Aids. But Aids is rampant in inner cities, where it attacks not just gay men, but IV drug users and women."