WASHINGTON: NO SQUARE
Denzel Washington tells John Hiscock why he couldn’t resist becoming a cowboy at 61
Denzel can ride a horse, wear chaps and swing a six-shooter with the best of them
T HERE is something of the gunslinger about Denzel Washington as he saunters into a suite at the Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto and casually waves a hand in greeting.
There is something about his swagger that immediately evokes his latest screen incarnation: Sam Chisolm, the leader of a gang of outlaws in a remake of the classic Western The Magnificent Seven.
Washington’s renegades are different from the group famously portrayed by Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen and the rest; in place of seven Caucasian cowboys, there is an Asian knife-wielding assassin, a Native American warrior and a Mexican desperado, as well as Washington’s African-American leader. And this film’s gang defends a frontier town from a rapacious mining company as opposed to Eli Wallach’s Mexican bandits.
Nevertheless, the remake stays true to the spirit of the 1960 original, and the two-time Oscar-winner says he threw himself into the action with gusto.
“I read the script and thought, ‘This is a good idea, it’s fun just to shoot guns and ride horses.’ And I knew that we were going to win,” he laughs. “I liked feeding my horse and washing him. Equine therapy is really good for the soul.”
Washington dominates the movie; US critics have compared his screen presence to John Wayne in his prime — “He speaks little and shoots fast,” said The Boston Globe — an achievement all the more impressive when you consider not just that Washington had never made a Western, but that he did not grow up watching them either.
“My father was a minister so we grew up in a church and we didn’t go to the movies,” he says. “King of Kings and The Ten Commandments and that was it. Appearing in a Western wasn’t like some childhood dream.”
He was talked into the role by director Antoine Fuqua, who also made the 2001 film Training Day, for which Washington won his Academy award for best actor. Over lunch, Fuqua painted the picture of the actor riding over the brow of a hill on a black horse, and even played Washington a hip-hop version of an Ennio Morricone theme tune to set the right mood. (The final film has a new score in place of the famous one by Elmer Bernstein.)
“Denzel smiled and said, ‘All right, let’s do it,’” Fuqua has said. “I walked out of the restaurant and said to myself, ‘Denzel Washington is getting on a horse for The Magnificent Seven.’”
Washington grew a moustache and sideburns, took riding lessons and endlessly practised spinning a nickel-plated Colt .45, which he took everywhere with him during filming in Louisiana.
With 50 movies under his belt, Washington is taking things a little easier nowadays, although he has just finished directing and starring in Fences, based on the August Wilson play in which a black man struggles with race relations in the 1950s. One of the top actors of his generation, he has built a reputation as a focused, intense and uncompromising artist who has the power to inspire and influence others.
Yet he is quick to shrug off any such heavy responsibility. “I don’t take what I do too seriously,” he says. “I just try to keep things simple. I am an ordinary guy with an extraordinary job. I know what a privilege it is to be in this position and I appreciate it now more than ever.”
The 61-year-old, who is a devout Christian, has been married to the same woman, Pauletta Pearson, for 33 years and has two sons, aged 31 and 25, and two daughters, aged 28 and 25.
“For some people, acting is their life, and I said that, too, but then I had a family and I understood the difference between life and making a living. Acting is making a living and a family is life.
“When I turned 60, I looked in the mirror and I said, ‘You know, this ain’t the dress rehearsal, Denzel, so what do you want to do with the rest of your life? What quality of life do you want?’ So you simplify things, you try to drink more water and you try to eliminate the negative things in your life.”
Critics have suggested that, by pitting a community against evil industrialists, the new Magnificent Seven is making a point about modern-day corporate villainy.
But Washington says that didn’t occur to him.
“I didn’t think that way,” he says with a shrug. “I didn’t read the script and go, ‘Oh, this is a movie against tyranny.’ It didn’t get that deep. I just dug the clothes and getting to ride the horse and going around shooting.” — © The Daily Telegraph, London ý ‘The Magnificent Seven’ is in cinemas