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Washington doesn't consider himself a sex symbol either, though on that point many moviegoers would disagree. Director Spike Lee recalls going to see Mo' Better Blues in a theater and, when Washington's character was being beaten up hearing women scream, "Not the face!" Yet filmgoers and critics have noticed that this romantic leading man has had notably few romantic attachments on-screen--particularly with white leading ladies. In The Pelican Brief, for instance, Washington shares top billing with Julia Roberts but never has an affair with her onscreen (though the two characters get together in the John Grisham novel on which the film is based). Similarly, in Devil, a romance involving Washington's character that was in Walter Mosley's novel is absent from the film (Washington says it was removed for dramatic flow).
In an interview with TIME last week in Toronto, where he was attending a film festival, Washington was diplomatically evasive on the subject: "Is [romance] being kept from me? I don't know. I can say that a love story within a film has never been a reason for my doing or not doing a film. In The Pelican Brief, in the script that I read, it wasn't there, and I also felt that since [the boyfriend of Roberts' character] had died three days ago, it didn't seem right to me that...she falls in love with another guy." Roberts, asked about their screen relationship, giggles and replies: "I wouldn't have minded if he kissed her...but Denzel has a valid point, and I respected that."
Respect is something Washington has always commanded. He grew up in Mount Vernon, New York, the son of a beautician mother and a minister father. His father, who died during rehearsals of Malcolm X, provided an inspiration for that role, and Washington remains religious, saying that he has an ongoing "conversation" with God. A few weeks ago, he quietly agreed to donate $2.5 million to the building fund of the West Angeles Church of God in Christ, where he, his wife of 12 years, Pauletta Pearson and his four children attend services.
Washington went to New York's Fordham University, where he was known as both a brilliant actor and a mercurial student. "I had to tell him to get his ass in class 'cause he was cutting so much," says Robinson Stone, a former professor. "[But] when I saw him in The Emperor Jones, he was the best actor I had seen onstage." After graduation, Washington studied with the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and later appeared in numerous New York stage productions, including the acclaimed 1981 Negro Ensemble Theater production of A Soldier's Play. "Show business has a tendency to spin people around and make them so dizzy they forget where they came from and where they're going," says Julia Roberts, a woman who knows a thing or two about Hollywood vertigo. "Denzel is very grounded in who he is and what he's doing and why he's doing it."