Samedi

by Emma Boyce

Michael Hainey’s interview with Denzel Washington in the current issue of GQ magazine touches on everything from acting to his spiritual roots growing up with an estranged preacher father to Obama’s presidency. There's also a little local lagniappe in this edition of the men's style magazine, and it doesn't involve Alan Richman.

Posing in R Bar on Royal Street, a local dive bar where big names have been known to drop in, Washington looks from another era (a more stylish one) as he leans casually against a pool table in a well-tailored pinstripe suit and tie. The R Bar insignia glows red behind him in the photograph, taken by Nathaniel Goldberg.

Laura, one of the bartenders at R Bar, noted Washington’s “very powerful presence.”  Even though she did not talk to the actor directly she was “taken with the really impressive way he made eye contact and real conversation with the camera crew, people he just met,” she said.  

In the article, Washington paints his childhood self as a mini entrepreneur, working in a barbershop and taking his clients clothes to the cleaners on the side for an extra fifty cents.  As the son of a preacher he attended church every Sunday and notes one particularly intense spiritual and physical experience of being “filled with the Holy Spirit.”  The terrifying moment, where Washington describes himself as sobbing, sweating and writhing in a sort of spiritual agony comes in stark contrast to the cool, smooth Denzel we know today.  

Washington, whose idea of great acting can be summed up as one powerful look from Robert De Niro in The Godfather II, started acting as a fluke.  With failing grades and some encouragement from a YMCA camp instructor after a talent show, Denzel thought he’d give acting a try in lieu of the military.  Decades and two Oscars later we can all be confident he made the right choice.

Along with his heroes like Al Pacino and Marlon Brando, Washington is one of the untouchables.  As the first African American to receive an Oscar since Sidney Poitier in 1963, he has one piece of advice for his fans: take responsibility.  “Whatever it is you chose,” he says, “be the best at it.”  Washington certainly has excelled in his field. As he says in Training Day, King Kong ain’t got nothing on him.