

Intriguingly, director Joel Coen cast his Tragedy of Macbeth stars older, allowing Washington and Frances McDormand to portray a longtime couple who know each other inside out, their scheming being the by-product of a marriage between two survivors.
Denzel washington movie time travel full#
Washington plays the doomed thane as a proud warrior full of intensity and serious intent, a man whose every thought and worry register on that gloriously weathered face. (“I’d watch a couple of minutes: ‘No, no, no, I don’t want that to affect me,’” he said in 2022.) Unsurprisingly, then, his Macbeth (while perhaps not definitive) is very much him. Washington’s take on Macbeth was unencumbered by memories of other actors who have tackled the role over the years: He had never seen a production of Shakespeare’s tragedy, and he wasn’t about to check out earlier film adaptations. represents a bracing change of pace, as Washington shows us the flop sweat and desperation of a righteous man coming to terms with the fact that his years of activism have done little to change the world. For fans who have gotten used to the actor’s more swaggering portrayals, Roman J. This aging champion for the little guy yearns for a fight at every occasion, not aware that his stubbornness and ego have proved to be his undoing, and Washington responds with a harried, vulnerable performance. is a profoundly odd character drama - Nightcrawler writer-director Dan Gilroy tries to graft a thriller subplot onto the story near the end - and it’s driven by Roman’s idealistic, combative attitude. Washington earned his ninth Oscar nomination - and sixth Best Actor nod - for his peculiar, utterly fascinating portrait of the title character, an aggressively principled defense attorney who faces an ethical crisis of his own making. Unlike a Nicolas Cage, he has kept from becoming a self-parody, focusing on gritty genre pictures for a few years before throwing us a curveball and doing something deeply moving like a Flight or Fences.īut which performance is his best? Here are all of Denzel Washington’s movie roles, ranked. Happily, Washington’s career has not worked that way. Many well-respected actors have worked their way up the Hollywood food chain, trading their Oscar cachet for big paydays and embarrassing themselves in the process. (Consider: He’s been in only six movies that have made more than $100 million domestically, his biggest hit being the relatively modest $130 million of American Gangster.) Almost alone among consistent box-office draws, Washington himself is the selling point: Even when he does a remake ( The Magnificent Seven, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3), you’re going because of him. Tied to no franchise - seriously, until The Equalizer 2, he’d never made a sequel - he puts asses in seats, but not in such huge amounts that there’s any worry of Denzel fatigue setting in. Although he has a well-established onscreen persona, it’s mutable enough to allow him to move from R-rated action films ( The Book of Eli) to serious dramas ( Philadelphia) to passion projects with frequent collaborators (like Spike Lee). Of all A-list stars, Denzel Washington’s career may be the most enviable. The hard work evidently paid off, and Ethan Hawke went on to land one of the biggest roles of his career up to that point, and perhaps since.This article was originally published in 2018 and has been updated to include the actor’s most recent work. I’m going to eat a little humble pie, and I’m going to go in and I’m going to get this part.

I was already being offered movies and things were going well, but I was like, you know what? I’m going to get this part. Touchstone Pictures If Rossio wanted Dj Vu to show the philosophical and emotional ramifications of time travel, he was likely disappointed with. I met Antoine, and it became kind of clear to me that Antoine and Denzel wanted me but other people didn’t want me, and I was going to really have to jump through some hoops and audition. Denzel Washington in a scene from Dja Vu. Despite this (and despite Fuqua and Washington wanting him on board), Hawke still had to go through the normal auditioning process, which he recalled during a 2018 episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast:

When Ethan Hawke was going out for his role in Training Day, he was already an established star in young Hollywood, having appeared in Reality Bites, Great Expectations, and Dead Poets Society. Ethan Hawke Had To ‘Eat A Little Humble Pie’ When Going Out For The Role Of Jake Hoyt In Training Day
