Denzel Washington opens up to ‘Esquire’ about his faith and sobriety
Stephane Cardinale – Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images
Denzel Washington is one of the most famous people on the planet, but he shows a new side of himself in a first-person feature in Esquire.
Denzel looks back at having “one foot” in the rough streets of Mount Vernon, New York, growing up, and tracks his life from then to today.
In his youth, Denzel explained, “I shot dope just like they shot dope, but I never got strung out. And I never got strung out on liquor. I had this ideal idea of wine tastings and all that — which is what it was at first. And that’s a very subtle thing. I mean, I drank the best.”
He said he’d down two bottles of “the best” on the daily, but clarified, “I never drank while I was working or preparing. I would clean up, go back to work. … However many months of shooting, bang, it’s time to go. Then, boom. Three months of wine, then time to go back to work.”
Denzel said he’ll be sober 10 years this December.
Now 70, Washington says his “little brother” Lenny Kravitz hooked him up with a trainer. “Things are opening up for me now — like being seventy,” Denzel says.
“It’s real. And it’s okay. This is the last chapter — if I get another thirty, what do I want to do? My mother made it to ninety-seven.”
Of his faith, Denzel says, “I know now. God is real. God is love. God is the only way. God is the true way. God blesses. It’s my job to lift God up, to give Him praise, to make sure that anyone and everyone I speak to the rest of my life understands that He is responsible for me.”
“I’m unafraid. I don’t care what anyone thinks,” Washington says, adding of his faith, “you can’t talk like that and win Oscars. … It’s not talked about in this town. It’s not talked about.”
Janis: Graphic House/Archive Photos/Getty Images; Shailene:Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images for STARZ
Shailene Woodley is opening up about her plans to play Janis Joplin on the big screen.
The actress’s plans to produce and star in a biopic about Joplin were announced in early September. During an appearance on Live with Kelly and MarkWednesday,she discussed how important it is to her to get things right.
“It’s been over six years of putting it together,” she said of the film. “To me, it’s important to do these things with a lot of integrity and a lot of care. Janis is someone I just have always deeply respected and admired, like the spirit in her, and the soul she was on this planet and kind of the light that she was on this planet.”
She added, “It’s been a really fun journey getting to know her better through the process of finding all the creative elements.”
As for whether she can tackle the singing needed for the film, Shailene shared, “I’m not like a trained singer, but … I can sing in my shower. It turns out I can also sing outside of the shower, which I didn’t really know until I started working on the Janis project.”
She says she’s been working with hit songwriter Linda Perry getting ready for the film, noting, “She’s really encouraged me and helped me find my center in my own voice, which is incredible.”
Back in June, Sir Ian McKellen seemed to downplay a fall off a London stage during a performance of the Shakespeare adaptation Player Kings. A statement at the time said he was in good spirits and would make a speedy recovery. But now, several months later, McKellen reveals the whole thing was pretty scary.
“Apparently, I’m told by the company manager who’s holding my head as I lay on the floor, I said to her, ‘I’ve broken my neck. I’m dying,'” McKellen told ABC Audio in an interview from his home in London. “Now, I don’t remember saying that, but I must have felt it.”
He says he’s fine now, after fracturing his wrist and hurting his back, crediting the fat suit he was wearing in order to play rotund Knight John Falstaff with protecting his ribs and hips in the fall. And while physically he’s almost completely back to normal, the mental effects linger.
“I’m left with some disappointment,” McKellen confesses. “I’m ashamed that I didn’t complete — you know, my pride was bruised. How could this happen to me?” he asks with a chuckle. “And I suspect that although physically I’m healing, I wonder whether deep down there’s something mental or emotional that was jolted that needs to be attended to. And I’m attending to it by not working at the moment and resting.”
McKellen appears to be in a reflective mood as he discusses the fall, and his new film The Critic, in which he plays a prominent 1930s London theater critic named Jimmy Erskine, a once feared and respected tastemaker trying to recapture his glory days. Reviews, McKellen reveals, are a necessary evil for actors.
“We are seeking for approval. And we’re probably rather pathetic people who need that approval. We’re not confident enough of ourselves. So if you get a good review — oh, it’s an added pleasure. And if you get a bad review, it can be very hurtful,” McKellen admits.
And although he hasn’t been on the receiving end of a lot of bad reviews, the ones he has had are seared in his brain. Take for instance his turn in a Bernard Shaw revival in London’s West End when he was much younger. He starred in the play alongside a pre-Dame Judi Dench and recalls how he overheard a few fellow actors discussing his performance one night at a restaurant.
“One of them was going on and on and on about how dreadful I’d been. And I was typical of these modern young actors, using my voice in the wrong way and drawing attention to myself. And he just simply hadn’t enjoyed it.” McKellen says he laughed off the criticism, but the next night onstage it crept into his consciousness. “And as I looked into the audience talking away, I suddenly thought, ‘My God, every single person in this audience agrees with that actor that I heard last night. They all think I’m rubbish. I shouldn’t be here.’” He says he froze, forgot his lines and Dench had to rescue him.
Still, he swears if there’s a bad review out there, he’s going to read it. “I like to know. If people haven’t enjoyed the film of Cats I’d like to know about it.” 2019’s film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Broadway musical Cats was savaged by critics, probably the worst-reviewed film McKellen has ever been in. McKellen didn’t get the blame, though. His portrayal of Gus the Theater Cat was mostly praised. And he may be returning to a role that garnered him some of the most praise of his film career: the mighty wizard Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings movies.
“There are going to be a couple of more films, I think, with some of the same characters in it. And I’ve been asked to stand by,” McKellen says. “But there’s no script that I read, and no date. All I can say, as far as I’m concerned, they better be quick.”
Quick, because at 85 years old, McKellen isn’t sure how much time he has left. “I’m rather living a year at a time, rather than two or three years at a time,” he says.
Gandalf is a part of his legacy, so if he can, he’s going to go to New Zealand and put on the robes. Legacy is a theme in The Critic, as well. In his downtime, legacy and what’s next are things McKellen has been thinking about a lot. He remembers going to visit a friend in the hospital, a friend who was dying, and asking him what he was thinking about as his life neared the end.
“And he said, ‘I don’t want to miss anything.’ And that’s rather my view,” McKellen says wistfully. He wants to know what’s going to happen. “How is AI going to really take over? I mean, what is life going to be like? When is the world going to settle down? Is the world going to survive? I won’t know. I won’t know. And I suppose I won’t care because I won’t exist.”
Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban‘s daughter, Sunday Rose Kidman Urban, walked her first runway show on Tuesday.
The 16-year-old opened the Miu Miu spring/summer 2025 fashion show during Paris Fashion Week, an event that also saw Oscar nominee Willem Dafoe and Oscar winner Hilary Swank strutting their stuff.
“I’ve been wanting to do this for so long,” Kidman Urban told Vogue in an interview published Tuesday. “So when the offer came through, it was really exciting and now the day’s finally here.”
Kidman and Urban are also parents to daughter Faith Margaret Kidman Urban. The actress also shares two now-adult adopted children with ex-husband Tom Cruise — daughter Isabella Jane and son Connor Cruise.
Babygirl star Kidman supported her daughter Sunday Rose’s runway debut by resharing a post of the teenager walking the runway on her Instagram Story. She also attended a Miu Miu dinner party on Tuesday with her daughter.
The star-studded Miu Miu Spring/Summer 2025 Fashion Show also saw model and actresses Cara Delevingne and Alexa Chung on the catwalk.
