Denzel Washington at the premiere of 'Gladiator II' in Los Angeles on November 18, 2024.AXELLE/BAUER-GRIFFIN (FILMMAGIC)

DENZEL WASHINGTON

Denzel Washington, the actor who never watches his own films and shuns fame

With a potential 10th Oscar nomination for ‘Gladiator II’ on the horizon, the 70-year-old actor is preparing for a new challenge: his Broadway performance in ‘Othello,’ which opens in February

ANDREA JIMÉNEZ

Madrid - JAN 10, 2025 - 23:3

“I think I’m a good guy. I always try to do the right thing.” That’s how Denzel Washingtondefines himself. The actor, born in Mount Vernon, New York, recently celebrated his 70th birthday. With more than five decades of experience, he stands as one of the finest actors of his generation. As the decade shifts, Washington is embracing new challenges, aiming to further extend his legacy not only in cinema but also on Broadway, where he is set to premiere his fifth play.

Gladiator II takes $87m to break Ridley Scott opening box-office record

Gladiator II takes $87m to break Ridley Scott opening box-office record

Long-awaited sequel performs strongly in UK and France, although behind February blockbuster Dune: Part Two

Catherine Shoard

Monday 18 November 2024

Gladiator II isn’t entertaining audiences in the US, Canada and China until this Friday, but scored the highest ever international opening for a Ridley Scott film over the weekend, taking $87m.

 

There could be so many more risks taken in using new people. The tried and tested becomes very boring' …
Sophie Okonedo. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

Interview

Sophie Okonedo interview: 'I have to go across the Atlantic to get work'

Sophie Okonedo is one of Britain's most accomplished and acclaimed actors – but most of her job offers come from the US, where last month she won a coveted Tony award for a Broadway role. So why is the UK neglecting its black stars?

Mark Lawson

Friday 4 July 2014

F

ew British actors have had a rave review from Barack Obama. But there – on Sophie Okonedo’s mobile phone, when we meet in a cafe near her north London home – is the 44th president of the United States, revealing, in a dressing room at the Ethel Barrymore theatre on Broadway, that he and Michelle had “enjoyed so much” watching her play a poor Chicago mother in the recent revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s 1950s play A Raisin in the Sun, in a cast that also included Denzel Washington.

 

A Raisin in the Sun review – Denzel Washington shines in a bracing revival

Ethel Barrymore theatre, New York

This compelling staging of Lorraine Hansberry's play, which forecast America's profound social transformations, boasts taut performances from Washington and Sophie Okonedo

Tom Sellar

Friday 4 April 2014

F

ifty-five years after its Broadway premiere – the first for a play by an African-American woman – A Raisin in the Sun has returned to the Ethel Barrymore theatre. One way to watch this star-powered revival with Denzel Washington and Sophie Okonedo is to measure the distance from 1959, when Lorraine Hansberry's stately play forecast the profound social transformations to come from America's burgeoning civil rights movement. Acknowledging this history, director Kenny Leon prefaces the evening with a short audio clip in which Hansberry speaks of the need for a theatre that can illuminate the nation.

A Raisin in the Sun certainly fulfills that mandate, with its bracing story of WalterYounger's hope-hungry family on Chicago's South Side. Yes, the drama creaks in places, and overwrought characters speak in lyrical crescendos found only in plays of the era. But this compelling version of a repertory staple shows how clearly Hansberry can still call to us across the years. A black president may occupy the White House today, but plenty of Walter Youngers remain foreclosed in their dream houses.

'I need the iron to be real and hot' ... Sophie Okonedo in A Raisin in the Sun

Interview

Sophie Okonedo on Broadway: 'We try out different things every night'

In A Raisin in the Sun, her New York theatre debut, the Hotel Rwanda star likes to keep Denzel Washington guessing – neither of them knows what the other will do next, she says

Alexis Soloski
10 April 2014

When Sophie Okonedo learned that the director Kenny Leon had cast her in the Broadway revival of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, she commenced a series of high kicks.

Hansberry's play, about an African-American clan crowded into a cramped apartment on Chicago's South Side, was named after a line in the Langston Hughes poem Dream Deferred; when we speak a few days after the show's triumphant opening, Okonedo describes her Broadway debut as a "dream come true".

 ‘Why can’t we say: you know what, I’m confident, I’m really happy about the work I did. I gave it my best’: Viola Davis. Photograph: Patrick Fraser for the Observer

Viola Davis: ‘That's how I feel about my life now. I’m pretty fabulous’

By Alex Clark

Sunday 15 January 2017

Her extraordinary performance in the upcoming Fences has seen Viola Davis tipped for an Oscar. But her success has taken a huge amount of self-belief. She tells Alex Clark why it is only through demanding respect that you get the parts you are due

I

t’s the run-up to Christmas and everybody in Los Angeles, which to a Brit feels unseasonably sun-drenched, is bemoaning the chilly weather; as we settle down in the Beverly Hills hotel, Viola Davis draws a warm jacket around her shoulders. Not that she’s complaining: throughout our conversation, she is determinedly upbeat, celebratory, optimistic. She radiates a sense of excitement and satisfaction that, at 51, all the hard work is really beginning to pay off.