Denzel Washington

This season, the new black is black. Going into the Academy Awards period it's clearer than ever there has been a sea-change in the status of African-Americans in Hollywood movies.

The Academy's history is self-evidently shameful. When Denzel Washington won the Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Glory in 1989, he became only the third black actor to take home an Oscar. The others were Hattie McDaniel for Gone with the Wind (1939) and Sidney Poitier for Lilies of the Field (1963).

In 2002 Washington was back at the podium, this time to collect the statuette for Best Actor for Training Day, the same year that Halle Berry was named the Academy's first ever black Best Actress for Monster's Ball.

Berry's subsequent career tail-off illustrates how Oscar can't guarantee significant career advancement, but just check out the names in play for acting honours this year. Top of the list, the all-black musical Dreamgirls, which industry guru David Poland is tipping to pick up a record-breaking 14 nominations.

He's surely deluded, but still, most journalists are jumping on the Dreamgirls bandwagon, and it seems a cert that Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson will win nominations, if only in the supporting category, possibly with Beyonce and 2005 Best Actor Jamie Foxx in there too.

Will Smith is considered a serious contender for Best Actor for Pursuit of Happyness, in which he costar with his own five year old son, Jaden, and so is Forest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland. Derek Luke - Denzel Washington's protage from Antwone Fisher - is also in with a shout for Catch a Fire. And though it's a long shot, Djimon Hounsou might sneak into the Supporting Actor category for a third African-set drama, Blood Diamond .

Granted, before we get too carried away, not a single one of these films is written or directed by an African-American. John Singleton remains the only African-American ever to be nominated for Best Director (Spike Lee has been nominated for Best Documentary and for Best Screenplay). When that statistic catches up with the demographics, then there really will be cause for celebration.

Tom Charity
tom.charity@lovefilm.com

The Leading Man: Denzel Washington

Denzel Washington may be the ideal leading man in movies today. Handsome, powerful, charismatic, sensitive, versatile, he's the complete package. He exudes strength, but unlike the mucho macho men who were box office kings in the 1980s when he got his start, he doesn't give the impression he's pumping iron - or steroids. Denzel's strength is more about inner resolve than musculature, more about self-respect than his pecs.

The son of a preacher and a devout Christian; married for more than 20 years (to the same woman!); father to four kids; Washington is more than just the perfect leading man, he's a role model in his own right.

Back in 1990, when Newsweek magazine ran a cover story about perceptions of beauty, they chose Denzel's perfectly proportioned face to illustrate the piece. He'd just become only the second black (male) actor to win an Academy Award, Best Supporting Actor for Glory (1989), a year after earning a nomination in the same category for playing Steve Biko in Cry Freedom.

Those two roles inspired inevitable comparisons with Sidney Poitier, and rightfully so: Poitier had beaten the path that Washington followed, and the two men share a sense of mission and social responsibility. When Washington was starting out in his career, carving out a name for himself in TV's St Elsewhere, he turned to Poitier for advice about a movie role he had been offered in a project he didn't much care for. Poitier told him that the first three or four films he did would define him in the industry - so Denzel passed and waited it out, until just a year later Richard Attenborough offered him Biko.

That kind of patience takes courage, but it's clear from the pictures he did next that Washington wanted to avoid the limitations that had been imposed on Poitier, a fine actor who rarely had the opportunity to show anything but nobility and grace under pressure.

Denzel was slick and slippery as Bleek Gilliam in Mo Better Blues - the first of four collaboration with Spike Lee, the most recent this year's excellent heist thriller Inside Man. He tried comedy in Heart Condition, romance in Mississippi Masala and thrills in Ricochet. He even did Shakespeare in Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing. When he played Malcolm X for Spike Lee - a performance which Premiere magazine ranked in the top 20 all-time best - he was equally convincing as the boot-suited street hustler, the political firebrand, and the spiritual leader.

Even so, part of the impact he had ten years later in Training Day stemmed from the subconscious dismay that it was Denzel Washington (!!) holding a gun to his partner's head and making him smoke PCP. The actor's quiet authority and composure naturally instills trust, so it was a shock when he cut loose and went all out for malignant evil. Wesley Snipes, sure, but Denzel? This was something else. Could Snipes have played the part? With just as much conviction, probably, but I bet he wouldn't have been given an Oscar for his pains. It was the clearest acknowledgement yet that he was more than a role model, that he could be real bad too.

At 51 years-old - 52 on December 28th - Washington is right at the top of his game. He commands upwards of $10 million a picture (reportedly double that for the forthcoming American Gangster, directed by Ridley Scott), has two Oscars on his mantelpiece, and enjoys widespread respect both within the film business and at large. He's a masterly technician at his craft - Tom Hanks said he learned more about acting from making Philadelphia with Washington than anyone else - but you never catch him acting. He's always within the scene: economical, still, patient, self-possessed, and you never want to take your eyes off him. Has he ever given a bad performance?

He's stuck by the filmmakers he trusts - four films with Spike Lee, three apiece with Tony Scott, Ed Zwick and Carl Franklin, two with Jonathan Demme - and learned enough along the way to direct himself quite capably. His second feature as director is due to go before the cameras next Spring. The Debaters is based on a true story about four African-American school kids in the 1930s who took on the best private school teams in the States and won.

Then there's his book: "A Hand to Guide Me" is a collection of tributes from the great and the good dedicated to the mentors who made a difference to their lives when they were young. It says something for the esteem in which he is held that Washington prevailed on the likes of Muhammad Ali, Toni Morrison, Gloria Steinem, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton to contribute. But perhaps it says more that he also thought to include many more inspirational stories from people who aren't so well known, teachers, scientists, and single mothers. It currently resides high in the American best-seller lists, which makes you wonder if there's nothing this man can't do?

Tom Charity
tom.charity@lovefilm.com