“That decision changed my life,” Washington later said, “because I wouldn’t have survived in the direction I was going. 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.” Washington earned a B.A. in Drama and Journalism from Fordham University in 1977. Upon graduation he was given a scholarship to attend 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. 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. 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. 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 2007, he co-starred with Russell Crowe in American Gangster. 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.
Jaden Smith’s Hollywood Entourage From Nikki Reed and Denzel Washington to Jackie Chan, see how the birthday boy hangs with the A-list from coast to coast [link]
