August Wilson (April 27, 1945 – October 2, 2005) was an American playwright whose work included a series of ten plays, The Pittsburgh Cycle, for which he received two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. Each is set in a different decade, depicting the comic and tragic aspects of the African-American experience in the twentieth century.

Life[link]

Childhood[link]

Wilson's maternal grandmother walked from North Carolina to Pennsylvania in search of a better life. Wilson was born Frederick August Kittel, Jr. in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the fourth of six children, to Sudeten-German immigrant baker/pastry cook, Frederick August Kittel, Sr. and Daisy Wilson, an African American cleaning woman, from North Carolina.^[1] Wilson's mother raised the children alone until he was five in a two-room apartment above a grocery store at 1727 Bedford Avenue; his father was mostly absent from his childhood. Wilson would go on to write under his mother's surname. The economically depressed neighborhood in which he was raised was inhabited predominantly by black Americans, and Jewish and Italian immigrants. Wilson's mother divorced and married David Bedford in the 1950s and the family moved from the Hill District to the then predominantly white working class neighborhood of Hazelwood, where they encountered racial hostility; bricks were thrown through a window at their new home. They were soon forced out of their house and on to their next home.^[2]

Wilson was the only African-American student at the Central Catholic High School in 1959 where he was soon driven away by threats and abuse.^[1]He then attended Connelley Vocational High School, but found the curriculum unchallenging. He dropped out of Gladstone High School in the 10th grade in 1960 after his teacher accused him of plagiarizing a 20-page paper he wrote on Napoleon I of France. Wilson hid his decision from his mother because he did not want to disappoint her. At the age of 16, he began working menial jobs and that allowed him to meet a wide variety of people, some of whom he later based his characters on, such as Sam in The Janitor (1985).

Wilson made such extensive use of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh to educate himself that it later awarded him a degree, the only such one it has bestowed. Wilson, who had learned to read at age four, began reading black writers at the library at age 12 and spent the remainder of his teen years educating himself by reading Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, and others.^[2]

Career[link]

By this time, Wilson knew that he wanted to be a writer, but this created tension with his mother, who wanted him to become a lawyer. She forced him to leave the family home and he enlisted in the United States Army for a three-year stint in 1962, but left after one year and went back to working various odd jobs as a porter, short-order cook, gardener, and dishwasher.

Frederick August Kittel, Jr. changed his name to August Wilson to honor his mother after his father's death in 1965. That same year he discovered the blues as sung by Bessie Smith and bought a stolen typewriter for $10, which he would often pawn when money was tight.^[3] At 20 he decided he was a poet and submitted his poetry to such magazines as Harpers.^[1] He began to write in bars, the local cigar store and cafes, on table napkins and on longhand yellow note pads, absorbing the voices and characters around him. He liked to write on cafe napkins because, he said, it freed him up and made him less self-conscious as a writer. He would then gather the notes and type them up at home.^[1] Gifted with a talent for catching dialects and accents, Wilson had an "astonishing memory," which he put to full use during his career. He slowly learnt not to censor the language he heard when incorporating it into his work.^[4]

Wilson's childhood home at 1727 Bedford Avenue in Pittsburgh

Malcolm X's voice would influence his life and work (such as The Ground on Which I Stand, 1996). Both the Nation of Islam and the Black Power spoke to him regarding self-sufficiency, self-defense and self-determination, and he appreciated the origin myths that Elijah Muhammad supported. In 1969 he married Brenda Burton, a Muslim, and Wilson converted to Islam in order to sustain the marriage. He and Brenda had one daughter, Sakina Ansari-Wilson, and divorced in 1972.^[2]

In 1968, Wilson co-founded the Black Horizon Theater in the Hill District of Pittsburgh along with his friend Rob Penny.^[1]His first play, Recycling, was performed for audiences in small theaters, schools and public housing community centers for 50 cents a ticket. Among these early efforts was Jitney which he revised more than two decades later as part of his 10-play cycle on 20th century Pittsburgh.^[2] He had no directing experience.^[1] He recalled "Someone had looked around and said, 'Who’s going to be the director?' I said, 'I will.' I said that because I knew my way around the library. So I went to look for a book on how to direct a play. I found one called The Fundamentals of Play Directing and checked it out."^[4]

In 1976 Vernell Lillie, who had founded the Kuntu Repertory Theatre at the University of Pittsburgh two years earlier, directed Wilson's The Homecoming. That same year Wilson saw Sizwe Banzi is Dead at the Pittsburgh Public Theater, his first professional play. Wilson, Penny, and poet Maisha Baton also started the Kuntu Writers Workshop to bring African-American writers together and to assist them in publication and production. Both organizations are still active.

In 1978 Wilson moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota at the suggestion of his friend director Claude Purdy, who helped him secure a job writing educational scripts for the Science Museum of Minnesota.^[1] In 1980 he received a fellowship for The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis. He quit the Museum in 1981, but continued writing plays. For three years, he was a part time cook for the Little Brothers of the Poor. Wilson had a long association with the Penumbra Theatre Company of St Paul, which gave the premieres of some Wilson plays. Fullerton Street which has been unproduced and unpublished, was written in 1980. It follows the Joe Louis/Billy Conn fight in 1940 and the loss of values attendant on the Great Migration to the urban North.^[2]

In 1987, Saint Paul's mayor George Latimer named May 27 "August Wilson Day." He was honored because he was the only person to both come from Minnesota and win a Pulitzer Prize.^[2]

In 1990 Wilson left St Paul after getting divorced and moved to Seattle. There he would develop a relationship with Seattle Repertory Theatre. Seattle Rep would ultimately be the only theater in the country to produce all of the works in his ten-play cycle and his one-man show How I Learned What I Learned.^[2]

Although he was a writer dedicated to writing for theater, a studio from Hollywood proposed filming Wilson's play Fences. He insisted that a black director be hired for the film saying "I declined a white director not on the basis of race but on the basis of culture. White directors are not qualified for the job. The job requires someone who shares the specifics of the culture of black Americans." The film was never made.

Wilson received many honorary degrees, including an honorary Doctor of Humanities from the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as a member of the University's Board of Trustees from 1992 until 1995.^[5]

Work[link]

Wilson's best known plays are Fences (1985) (which won a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award), The Piano Lesson (1990) (a Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award), Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and Joe Turner's Come and Gone.

Wilson stated that he was most influenced by "the four Bs": blues music, the Argentine novelist and poet Jorge Luis Borges, the playwright Amiri Baraka and the painter Romare Bearden.^[1] He went on to add writers Ed Bullins and James Baldwin to the list. He noted "From Borges, those wonderful gaucho stories from which I learned that you can be specific as to a time and place and culture and still have the work resonate with the universal themes of love, honor, duty, betrayal, etc. From Amiri Baraka, I learned that all art is political, although I don't write political plays. From Romare Bearden I learned that the fullness and richness of everyday life can be rendered without compromise or sentimentality." ^[1] He valued Bullins and Baldwin for their honest representations of everyday life.^[4]

Like Bearden, Wilson worked with collage techniques in writing: " I try to make my plays the equal of his canvases. In creating plays I often use the image of a stewing pot in which I toss various things that I’m going to make use of—a black cat, a garden, a bicycle, a man with a scar on his face, a pregnant woman, a man with a gun." On the meaning of his work Wilson stated "I once wrote this short story called 'The Best Blues Singer in the World,' and it went like this— “The streets that Balboa walked were his own private ocean, and Balboa was drowning.” End of story. That says it all. Nothing else to say. I’ve been rewriting that same story over and over again. All my plays are rewriting that same story."^[4]

The Pittsburgh Cycle[link]

Wilson's "Pittsburgh Cycle," also often referred to as his "Century Cycle," consists of ten plays—nine of which are set in Pittsburgh's Hill District, an African-American neighborhood that takes on a mythic literary significance like Thomas Hardy's Wessex, William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, or Irish playwright Brian Friel's Ballybeg. The plays are each set in a different decade and aim to sketch the Black experience in the 20th century and "raise consciousness through theater” and echo "the poetry in the everyday language of black America".^[4] He was fascinated by the power of theater as a medium where a community at large could come together to bear witness to events and currents unfolding.^[4]

Wilson noted:

"I think my plays offer (white Americans) a different way to look at black Americans," he told The Paris Review. "For instance, in 'Fences' they see a garbageman, a person they don't really look at, although they see a garbageman every day. By looking at Troy's life, white people find out that the content of this black garbageman's life is affected by the same things - love, honor, beauty, betrayal, duty. Recognizing that these things are as much part of his life as theirs can affect how they think about and deal with black people in their lives."^[1]

Although the plays of the cycle are not strictly connected to the degree of a serial story, some characters appear (at various ages) in more than one of the cycle's plays. Children of characters in earlier plays may appear in later plays. The character most frequently mentioned in the cycle is Aunt Ester, a "washer of souls". She is reported to be 285 years old in Gem of the Ocean, which takes place in her home at 1839 Wylie Avenue, and 322 in Two Trains Running. She dies in 1985, during the events of King Hedley II. Much of the action of Radio Golf revolves around the plan to demolish and redevelop that house, some years after her death. The plays often include an apparently mentally-impaired oracular character (different in each play)—for example, Hedley [Sr.] in Seven Guitars, Gabriel in Fences or Hambone in Two Trains Running.

• 1900s - Gem of the Ocean (2003)
• 1910s - Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1988)
• 1920s - Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984) - set in Chicago
• 1930s - The Piano Lesson (1990) - Pulitzer Prize^[6]
• 1940s - Seven Guitars (1995)
• 1950s - Fences (1987) - Pulitzer Prize^[6]
• 1960s - Two Trains Running (1991)
• 1970s - Jitney (1982)
• 1980s - King Hedley II (1999)
• 1990s - Radio Golf (2005)

Israel Hicks produced the entire 10-play cycle from 1990 to 2009 at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.^[7] Geva Theatre Center produced all 10 plays in decade order from 2007 to 2011 as "August Wilson's American Century." The Huntington Theatre Company of Boston has produced all 10 plays, finishing in 2012. During Wilson's life he worked closely with The Huntington to produce the later plays.

Personal life[link]

Wilson was married three times. His first marriage was to Brenda Burton from 1969 to 1972. They had one daughter, Sakina Ansari, born 1970. In 1981 he was married to Judy Oliver, a social worker, and divorced in 1990. He married again in 1994 and was survived by his third wife, costume designer, Constanza Romero, whom he met on the set of "The Piano Lesson". Together they had a daughter, Azula Carmen Wilson.^[1] Wilson was also survived by siblings Freda Ellis, Linda Jean Kittel, Donna Conley, Barbara Jean Wilson, Edwin Kittel and Richard Kittel.

Wilson reported that he had been diagnosed with liver cancer in June 2005 and been given three to five months to live. He died on October 2, 2005 at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, and was interred at Greenwood Cemetery, Pittsburgh on October 8, 2005.

Legacy[link]

The August Wilson Theatre, New York City

The childhood home of Wilson and his six siblings, at 1727 Bedford Avenue in Pittsburgh was declared a historic landmark by the State of Pennsylvania on May 30, 2007.^[8]

In Pittsburgh, there is an August Wilson Center for African American Culture.

On October 16, 2005, fourteen days after Wilson's death, the Virginia Theatre in New York City's Broadway theatre district was renamed the August Wilson Theatre. It is the first Broadway theatre to bear the name of an African-American.^[9]

The vacated Republican Street between Warren Avenue N. and 2nd Avenue N. on the Seattle Center grounds has been renamed August Wilson Way.^[10]

Honors and awards[link]

• 1985: New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play – Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
• 1986: Whiting Writers' Award - Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
• 1986: American Theatre Critics' Association Award - Fences
• 1987: Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play – Fences
• 1987: New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play – Fences
• 1987: Pulitzer Prize for Drama – Fences
• 1987: Tony Award for Best Play – Fences
• 1987: Outer Critics Circle Award - Fences
• 1987: Artist of the Year by Chicago Tribune
• 1988: Literary Lion Award from the New York Public Library
• 1988: New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play – Joe Turner's Come and Gone
• 1990: Governor's Awards for Excellence in the Arts and Distinguished Pennsylvania Artists
• 1990: Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play – The Piano Lesson
• 1990: New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play – The Piano Lesson
• 1990: Pulitzer Prize for Drama – The Piano Lesson
• 1991: Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame award
• 1992: American Theatre Critics' Association Award – Two Trains Running
• 1992: New York Drama Critics Circle Citation for Best American Play – Two Trains Running
• 1992: Clarence Muse Award
• 1996: New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play – Seven Guitars
• 1999: National Humanities Medal
• 2000: New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play – Jitney
• 2000: Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Play – Jitney
• 2002: Olivier Award for Best new Play – Jitney
• 2004: The 10th Annual Heinz Award in Arts and Humanities^[11]
• 2004: The U.S. Comedy Arts Festival Freedom of Speech Award
• 2005: Make Shift Award at the U.S. Confederation of Play Writers

Plays[link]

• Recycle, 1973 (produced in Pittsburgh, PA)
• Fullerton Street, 1980
• Black Bart and the Sacred Hills, 1977 (produced St. Paul, 1981)
• Jitney (1982)
• Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984)
• The Homecoming, 1989
• Fences (1987) - Pulitzer Prize^[6]
• Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1984)
• The Coldest Day of the Year, 1989
• The Piano Lesson (1990) - Pulitzer Prize^[6]
• Two Trains Running (1991)
• Seven Guitars (1995)
• King Hedley II (1999)
• How I Learned What I Learned (2002–03, Seattle)
• Gem of the Ocean (2003)
• Radio Golf (2005)

References[link]

External links[link]

Biography portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: August Wilson

• Bonnie Lyons, George Plimpton (Winter 1999). "August Wilson, The Art of Theater No. 14". The Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/839/the-art-of-theater-no-14-august-wilson. 
• August Wilson Theatre Broadway
• NPR Intersections: August Wilson, Writing to the Blues audio interview (6 mins)
• "Theater Is to Be Renamed for a Dying Playwright". September 2, 2005. New York Times.
• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette obituary. October 3, 2005
• August Wilson Center for African American Culture
• New York Times obituary "August Wilson, Theater's Poet of Black America, Is Dead at 60". October 3, 2005.
• "August Wilson - Distinguished black American playwright who reclaimed the stories of his people", obituary by Margaret Busby, The Guardian, 4 October 4, 2005.
• Believer Journal. Interview with Wilson. November 2004
• Putting Up Fences, article with video, Sept 17, 2009. BU Today.
• Berkeley Rep profile of Wilson and works

Denzel Washington
Denzel Washington in 2000
Born	Denzel Hayes Washington, Jr. (1954-12-28) December 28, 1954 (age 57) Mount Vernon, New York, United States
Occupation	Actor, screenwriter, director, producer
Years active	1974–present
Spouse	Pauletta Washington (1983–present)

Denzel Hayes Washington, Jr. (born December 28, 1954) is an American actor, screenwriter, director, and film producer. He first rose to prominence when he joined the cast of the medical drama, St. Elsewhere, playing Dr. Philip Chandler for six years. He has received much critical acclaim for his work in film since the 1990s, including for his portrayals of real-life figures, such as Steve Biko, Malcolm X, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, Melvin B. Tolson, Frank Lucas and Herman Boone.

Washington has received two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe awards, and a Tony Award.^[1] He is notable for winning the Best Supporting Actor for Glory in 1989; and the Academy Award for Best Actor in 2001 for his role in the film Training Day.^[2]

Early life[link]

Denzel Washington was born in Mount Vernon, near New York City, New York on December 28, 1954. His mother, Lennis "Lynne", was a beauty parlor-owner and operator born in Georgia and partly raised in Harlem. His father, Reverend Denzel Hayes Washington, Sr., a native of Buckingham County, Virginia, served as an ordained Pentecostal minister, and also worked for the Water Department and a local department store, S. Klein.^[3][4][5]

Washington attended grammar school at Pennington-Grimes Elementary School in Mount Vernon until 1968. When he was 14, his parents' marriage fell apart and his mother sent him to a private preparatory school, Oakland Military Academy, in New Windsor, New York. "That decision changed my life," Washington later said, "because I wouldn’t have survived in the direction I was going. The guys I was hanging out with at the time, my running buddies, have now done maybe 40 years combined in the penitentiary. They were nice guys, but the streets got them."^[6] After Oakland, Washington next attended Mainland High School, a public high school in Daytona Beach, Florida, from 1970–71.^[3] Washington was interested in attending Texas Tech University: "I grew up in the Boys Club in Mount Vernon, and we were the Red Raiders. So when I was in high school, I wanted to go to Texas Tech in Lubbock just because they were called the Red Raiders and their uniforms looked like ours."^[7] Washington earned a B.A. in Drama and Journalism from Fordham University in 1977.^[8] At Fordham he played collegiate basketball as a freshman guard^[9] under coach P. J. Carlesimo.^[10] After a period of indecision on which major to study and dropping out of school for a semester, Washington worked as a counselor at an overnight summer camp, Camp Sloane YMCA in Lakeville, Connecticut. He participated in a staff talent show for the campers and a colleague suggested he try acting.^[11]

Returning to Fordham that fall with a renewed purpose and focus, he enrolled at the Lincoln Center campus to study acting and was given the title roles in both Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones and Shakespeare's Othello. Upon graduation he attended graduate school at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, where he stayed for one year before returning to New York to begin a professional acting career.^[12]

Career[link]

Early work[link]

Washington at the 62nd Academy Awards, at which he won his first Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

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. He also filmed a series of commercials in the Fruit of the Loom ensemble, as Grapes. Shortly after graduating from Fordham, Washington made his professional acting debut in the 1977 made-for-television film Wilma with his first Hollywood appearance in the 1981 film Carbon Copy. Washington 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.^[13]

A major career break came when he starred as Dr. Phillip Chandler in the television hospital drama St. Elsewhere which ran from 1982 to 1988 on NBC. He was one of only a few African American actors to appear on the series for its entire six-year run. Washington also appeared in several television, film and stage roles such as the films A Soldier's Story (1984), Hard Lessons (1986) and Power (1986). In 1987 Washington starred as South African anti-apartheid political activist Steven Biko in Richard Attenborough's Cry Freedom for which he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. In 1989 Washington won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing a defiant self-possessed ex-slave soldier in the film Glory. Also that year he appeared in the film The Mighty Quinn, and as 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 leads to vigilantism and violence in For Queen and Country.

1990s[link]

1991, Washington starred as Bleek Gilliam in the Spike Lee film Mo' Better Blues. In 1992, he starred as Demetrius Williams in the romantic drama Mississippi Masala. Washington was reunited with Lee to play one of his most critically acclaimed roles as the title character of 1992's Malcolm X. His performance as the black nationalist leader earned him another nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. The next year he played the lawyer of a gay man with AIDS in the 1993 film Philadelphia. During the early and mid 1990s, Washington starred in several successful thrillers, including The Pelican Brief and Crimson Tide, as well as in comedy Much Ado About Nothing and alongside Whitney Houston in the romantic drama The Preacher's Wife.^{[citation needed]}

In 1998, Washington starred in Spike Lee's film, He Got Game. Washington played a father serving a six year prison term who is propositioned by the warden to a temporary parole on the terms that he must convince his top-ranked high-school basketball player son (Ray Allen), into signing with the governor's alma mater, Big State. The film also marked the third time that Spike Lee and Washington worked on a film together.^[14]

In 1999, Washington starred in The Hurricane a film about boxer Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter whose conviction for triple murder was overturned after he had spent almost 20 years in prison. A former reporter who was angry at seeing the film portray Carter as innocent despite the overturned conviction began a campaign to pressure Academy Award voters not to award the film Oscars.^[15] Washington did receive a Golden Globe Award in 2000 and a Silver Bear Award at the Berlin International Film Festival for the role.

He also presented the Arthur Ashe ESPY Award to Loretta Claiborne for her courage and appeared as himself in the end of The Loretta Claiborne Story film.^{[citation needed]}

2000s[link]

In 2000, Washington appeared in the Disney film Remember the Titans which grossed over $100 million at the United States box office.^[16]

When Washington won a Golden Globe award for Best Actor in a Dramatic Movie in 2000, as he noted: "No African-American has won best actor in the Golden Globes since Sidney Poitier, until I did".^[17] That made him the first Black actor to win the award in 36 years.^[18]

He won an Academy Award for Best Actor in his next film, the 2001 cop thriller Training Day as Detective Alonzo Harris, a rogue Los Angeles cop with questionable law-enforcement tactics. Washington was the second African-American performer to win an Academy Award for Best Actor, the first being Sidney Poitier who happened to receive an Honorary Academy Award the same night that Washington won. Washington holds the record (five so far) for most Oscar nominations by an actor of African descent, along with Morgan Freeman since 2009.

After appearing in 2002's box office success, the health care-themed John Q., Washington directed his first film, a well-reviewed drama called Antwone Fisher, in which he also co-starred.

Between 2003 and 2004, Washington appeared in a series of thrillers that performed generally well at the box office, including Out of Time, Man on Fire, and The Manchurian Candidate.^[19] In 2006, he starred in Inside Man, a Spike Lee-directed bank heist thriller co-starring Jodie Foster and Clive Owen, and Déjà Vu released in November 2006.

In 2006, Denzel worked alongside multi-talented Irish off-rock band The Script on their new project combining music and Hollywood. The hybrid of genres was critically acclaimed but didn't receive much mainstream attention due to a legal conflicts between The Script's record label and Denzel's studio commitments.

In 2007, he co-starred with Russell Crowe, for the second time after Virtuosity in 1995, in American Gangster. Washington directed and starred in the drama The Great Debaters with Forest Whitaker. Washington next appeared in the 2009 film The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, a remake of the 1974 thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, directed by Tony Scott as New York City subway security chief Walter Garber opposite John Travolta.^[20]

Return to theater[link]

Washington after a performance of Julius Caesar in May 2005

Washington was last seen onstage in the summer of 1990 in the title role of the Public Theater's production of Shakespeare's Richard III and in 2005, after a 15-year hiatus, he appeared onstage again in another Shakespeare play as Marcus Brutus in Julius Caesar on Broadway. The production's limited run was a consistent sell-out averaging over 100% attendance capacity nightly despite receiving mixed reviews.^[21]

2010s[link]

In February 2009, Washington began filming The Book of Eli, a post-Apocalyptic drama set in the near future which was released in January 2010. Also the same year, he starred as a veteran railroad engineer in the action film Unstoppable, about an unmanned, half-mile-long runaway freight train carrying a dangerous cargo. The film was directed by Tony Scott, and was the fifth collaboration between the two, after previous films Crimson Tide (1995), Man on Fire (2004), Déjà Vu (2006) and The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009).

On June 13, 2010, Washington won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play for his role in the play Fences.^[22][23] Washington co-starred with Ryan Reynolds in the 2012 film Safe House, and will star in The Matarese Circle.

Personal life[link]

On June 25, 1983, Washington married Pauletta Pearson, whom he met on the set of his first screen work, the television film Wilma. The couple have four children: John David (b. July 28, 1984), who signed a football contract with the St. Louis Rams in May 2006 and is currently playing with the Sacramento Mountain Lions of the United Football League (John David also played college football at Morehouse);^[24] Katia (b. November 27, 1987), who graduated from Yale University with a Bachelors of Arts in 2010; and twins Olivia and Malcolm (b. April 10, 1991) (Malcolm attends the University of Pennsylvania). In 1995, the couple renewed their wedding vows in South Africa with Archbishop Desmond Tutu officiating.^[25]

Washington is a devout Christian,^[26] and has considered becoming a preacher. He stated in 1999, "A part of me still says, ‘Maybe, Denzel, you’re supposed to preach. Maybe you’re still compromising.’ I’ve had an opportunity to play great men and, through their words, to preach. I take what talent I’ve been given seriously, and I want to use it for good.”^[27] In 1995 he donated 2.5 million dollars to help build the new West Angeles Church of God in Christ facility in Los Angeles.^[28]

Washington has served as the national spokesperson for Boys & Girls Clubs of America since 1993.^[29] As such, he has been featured in several public service announcements and awareness campaigns for the organization.^[30] In addition, he has served as a board member for Boys & Girls Clubs of America since 1995.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia named Washington as one of three people (the others being directors Oliver Stone and Michael Moore) with whom they were willing to negotiate for the release of three defense contractors that the group had held captive from 2003 to 2008.^[31]

On May 18, 1991, Washington was awarded an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Fordham University, for having "impressively succeeded in exploring the edge of his multifaceted talent".^[32] In 2011 he donated $2 million to Fordham for an endowed chair of the theatre department, as well as $250,000 for a theatre-specific scholarship to Fordham. He also was awarded an honorary doctorate of humanities from Morehouse College on May 20, 2007.^[33]

In 2008, Washington visited Israel with a delegation of African American artists in honor of the Jewish state's 60th birthday.^[34]

Washington is a fan of the New York Yankees. He is good friends with former manager Joe Torre. He is also good friends with comedians Jerry Seinfeld and George Wallace.

Filmography[link]

References[link]