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Thu 27 August 2026 17:45, UK
Actors like Denzel Washington only manage to come along once every generation.
Washington never claimed to be any better at his job than anyone else whenever he got onto a film set, but the attention that he put into his craft is what he is usually remembered for, rather than having one set character that he plays in every move. He contains multitudes as an actor throughout every project he’s worked on, so there was no point for him to be placed in a specific category in every film that he plays.
Because, really, that’s the opposite of what you want as an actor. It’s called the art of filmmaking for a reason, and no matter how many times you have seen a certain type of film throughout your time on this Earth, the artists are the ones who make characters and deliver monologues that make you feel like you’re learning every one of these lessons for the very first time whenever the film starts.
And a lot of what makes Washington’s greatest films work so well is because of how much of himself he’s able to put into every one of his works. He didn’t need to be the same kind of person from one film to another, but if you look at every one of his iconic performances, you can watch everything from Remember the Titans to Fences to The Book of Eli and still get a sense of the real person who’s deeply moved to be portraying these people onscreen.
That also applies to when he’s playing some of his nastier roles. Anyone else would have wanted to stay away from a film like Seven, but after it made more money than anyone anticipated, Washington realised that there was more to life than just playing good guys for the rest of his career. It’s all about diversity, and Training Day became his entrance into playing more crooked characters on the big screen as well.
But the movie world loves to debate more than anything else, and it wasn’t long before Washington started getting pitted next to some of the greatest performers that had come before him as well. The whole thing may have seemed flattering at first, but if you look back on the kinds of people that he was put in the same league as, he felt that it didn’t make sense to keep comparing him to the work that Sidney Poitier did whenever he made one of his more grounded performances.
He didn’t have a bad word to say about the acting legend, but he didn’t take a liking to fans who wanted to call him the modern-day version of the actor, either, saying, “[I want to be] the best actor I can be. [People have called me] the new Sidney Poitier. I love Sidney, and that comparison bores the hell out of me. Because they want to put you in a box so they can know who you are.”
Further reading: Cutting Room Floor
It’s easy to see why it bothers him, though. Every artist has that moment where people think that they have them figured out, and Washington never felt like he needed to exist in one space throughout his career. Some of the greatest actors of all time can get pigeonholed if they fall into that trap, and while Washington was still proud of the performances he made, there was no way that he was going to cater to what the critical world had to say about what he was like in every movie.
Because at the end of the day, movies are about creating something magical onscreen, and even though Washington has worked that magic more than a few times, he didn’t always want to rely on giving people what they want. A new Sidney Poitier might show themselves at some point later down the line, but he was more focused on being the best version of Denzel Washington that anyone had ever seen.
