GLADIATOR II Star Denzel Washington Covers ESQUIRE’s Winter Issue

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Denzel Washington has lived a big life. Tough streets, close calls, a wife of 41 years, four kids, 50 movies, two Oscars, three Equalizers. For the first time—on the occasion of GLADIATOR II, and his approaching 70th birthday—the man himself breaks it all down, in his own words, from the moments that mattered to the experiences that made him. As told to Ryan D’Agostino, “The Book of Denzel” is on Esquire.com now and in the new Winter issue, available everywhere by December 3.

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On the characters he played being true to his life: “Those characters I played in Training Day, in American Gangster—it might look like they were close to me, and I could tell you they were, but I wasn’t no gangster. I ran with them real gangsters down there, but I was not them. So let me not tell that lie to you. I had one foot in the streets, but I ain’t no killer.”

On his character Alonzo in Training Day: “I created that character out of lines someone else wrote. I changed pretty much everything. In the original script he was more of a straight-ahead cop, but we got into the whole gangster side of it and met some gangster cops. We did the research.”

On doing acid as a teenager at Oakland Academy, the private, semi-military school he attended: “Blotters. Orange Owsley. We did it on Fridays because we had to be back in class Monday. My first trip, the trees are moving. I’m scared to leave. I was by myself, and everyone else was waiting for me back at the little lodges we lived in. (This is probably why I’m screwed up now.) I don’t think I got back until four in the morning, and I’m sneaking around knocking on everyone’s doors, telling them, Man, there was the snake, and the spiders were trying to come through, and— They started laughing. They said, D, you’re tripping! I said, I know. It was pretty tame, though. It was psychedelic, but it was tame. There was a little weed around, and the acid when someone could get it. I wasn’t big on alcohol, partly because you had to sneak out and go get somebody to get it for you in Newburgh on the weekends.”

On being a descendent of George Washington: “Here’s a fact: We’re descendants of George Washington. We’re ex-slaves. My sister did the whole genealogical history of our family. She is truly a genius. She’s good, and she spent forever figuring it all out. We still own land down there—not far from D. C. Come on. Our last name’s Washington. Do the math.”

On having religion in Hollywood: “Things I said about God when I was a little boy, just reciting them in church along with everybody else, I know now. God is real. God is love. God is the only way. God is the true way. God blesses. It’s my job to lift God up, to give Him praise, to make sure that anyone and everyone I speak to the rest of my life understands that He is responsible for me. When you see me, you see the best I could do with what I’ve been given by my lord and savior. I’m unafraid. I don’t care what anyone thinks. See, talking about the fear part of it—you can’t talk like that and win Oscars. You can’t talk like that and party. You can’t say that in this town. I’m free now. It’s not talked about in this town. It’s not talked about. It’s not talked about. It’s not fashionable. It’s not sexy. But that doesn’t mean people in Hollywood don’t believe. There’s no such thing called Hollywood anyway. What does that even mean? That to me means a street called Hollywood Boulevard. It’s not like we all meet somewhere and discuss what we believe. So I don’t know how many other actors have faith. I didn’t do no poll. How would I find that out? I mean, there’s no Church Actor Meetings I’ve been to.”

On how faith informs the roles he chooses to play: “[M]y faith has always informed the roles I choose. Always. I’ve always been led by God, and most of my performances are faith filled. Even if I was playing the devil. I still have my shooting script from Training Day, and I wrote on the cover: “The wages of sin is death.” The wages of sin is death. And now all these years later in Gladiator II, I play another bad guy in another great movie. Even in the darkest stories, I’m looking for the light.”

On losing the Oscar to Kevin Spacey (for American Beauty) in 2000: “I’m sure I went home and drank that night. I had to. I don’t want to sound like, Oh, he won my Oscar, or anything like that. It wasn’t like that. And you know, there was talk in the town about what was going on over there on that side of the street, and that’s between him and God. I ain’t got nothing to do with that. I pray for him. That’s between him and his maker.”

On drinking: “Wine is very tricky. It’s very slow. It ain’t like, boom, all of a sudden. And part of it was we built this big house in 1999 with a ten-thousand-bottle wine cellar, and I learned to drink the best. So I’m gonna drink my ’61s and my ’82s and whatever we had. Wine was my thing, and now I was popping $4,000 bottles just because that’s what was left. And then later in those years I’d call Gil Turner’s Fine Wines & Spirits on Sunset Boulevard and say, Send me two bottles, the best of this or that. And my wife’s saying, Why do you keep order­ing just two? I said, Because if I order more, I’ll drink more. So I kept it to two bottles, and I would drink them both over the course of the day. I never drank while I was working or preparing. I would clean up, go back to work—I could do both. However many months of shooting, bang, it’s time to go. Then, boom. Three months of wine, then time to go back to work.”

On vices: “I never got strung out on heroin. Never got strung out on coke. Never got strung out on hard drugs. I shot dope just like they shot dope, but I never got strung out. And I never got strung out on liquor. I had this ideal idea of wine tastings and all that—which is what it was at first. And that’s a very sub­tle thing. I mean, I drank the best. I drank the best.”

On drinking after completing the filming of Flight: “I wasn’t drinking when we filmed Flight, I know that, but I’m sure I did as soon as I finished. That was getting toward the end of the drinking, but I knew a lot about waking up and looking around, not knowing what happened. But look: I was put on this planet to do good. I’ve been blessed with this ability to act, and I’ve tried to use it for goodness’ sake. For God-ness’ sake. Even the darkest guys. I know during Flight I was thinking about those who had been through addiction, and I wanted good to come out of that. It wasn’t like it was therapeutic. Actually, maybe it was therapeutic! It had to have been.”

On getting sober: “I’ve done a lot of damage to the body. We’ll see. I’ve been clean. Be ten years this December. I stopped at sixty and I haven’t had a thimble’s worth since. Things are opening up for me now—like being seventy. It’s real. And it’s okay. This is the last chapter—if I get another thirty, what do I want to do? My mother made it to ninety-seven.”

On getting a trainer: “About two years ago my good friend, my little brother, Lenny Kravitz, said, D, I wanna hook you up with a trainer. And he did, and he’s another man of God. I started with him February of last year. He makes the meals for me and we’re training, and I’m now 190-something pounds on my way to 185. I was looking at pictures of myself and Pauletta at the Academy Awards for Macbeth, and I’m just looking fat, with this dyed hair, and I said, Those days are over, man. I feel like I’m getting strong. Strong is important.”

On doing more Equalizer films: “I told them I would do another Equalizer, and we’re doing four and five. More people are happy about that—people love those daggone Equalizers. It’s about variety for me. I’ll sometimes say to myself, One’s for me, one’s for them. So for example, Othello: We’re doing it on Broadway and then a movie. That’s for me. But I’ve come to realize that the Equalizer films are for me, too, because they’re for the people.”

On Gladiator II: “It’s a great cast and a great story and I get to be a part of it. I loved the first one, with my friend Russell Crowe. When Ridley Scott called asking if I would be in it—are you kidding? It took me about two seconds to say yes. We had done American Gangster, of course, also with Russell. But this film, Gladiator II, continues a great, epic story in such a truthful way, an exciting way—it’s a wonderful script—and I’m happy I’m in it with those fantastic actors.”

On what he’s proudest of: “[W]hen I think of what I’m proudest of, anything I’ve accom­plished doesn’t even come to mind. It’s our chil­dren: They’re good people. They know right from wrong. What else can you ask for, you know?”

[Photo Credit: Norman Jean Roy/Esquire Magazine]

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