THROWBACKTHISDAY, DEC 28; Is Denzel Washignton's Birthday

                             

On Thisday December 28 in 1954, Washington was born in Mount Vernon, New York. His father, Denzel Hayes Washington, Sr., a native of Buckingham County, Virginia, was an ordained Pentecostal minister, and also worked for the Water Department and at a local department store, S. Klein. His mother, Lennis "Lynne" (née Lowe), was a beauty parlor owner and operator born in Georgiaand partly raised in Harlem.

Washington attended Pennington-Grimes Elementary School in Mount Vernon until 1968. When he was 14, his parents broke up, and his mother sent him to a private preparatory school, Oakland Military Academy in New Windsor, New York. "That decision changed my life," Washington later said, "because I wouldn't have survived in the direction I was going. The guys I was hanging out with at the time, my running buddies, have now done maybe 40 years combined in the penitentiary. They were nice guys, but the streets got them."^[7] After Oakland, Washington next attended Mainland High School, a public high school in Daytona Beach, Florida, from 1970 to 1971.^[4] He was interested in attendingTexas Tech University: "I grew up in the Boys Club in Mount Vernon, and we were the Red Raiders. So when I was in high school, I wanted to go to Texas Tech in Lubbock just because they were called the Red Raiders and their uniforms looked like ours."^[8] Washington earned a B.A. in Drama and Journalism from Fordham University in 1977.^[9] At Fordham, he played collegiate basketball as a guard^[10] under coach P.J. Carlesimo.^[11] After a period of indecision on which major to study and dropping out of school for a semester, Washington worked as creative arts director at an overnight summer camp, Camp Sloane YMCA in Lakeville, Connecticut. He participated in a staff talent show for the campers and a colleague suggested he try acting.^[12]

Returning to Fordham that fall with a renewed purpose, Washington enrolled at the Lincoln Center campus to study acting, and where he was given the title roles in Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones and Shakespeare's Othello. He then attended graduate school at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, where he stayed for one year before returning to New York to begin a professional acting career.

The Oscar-winning actor Denzel Washington, who will go on to star in such movies as Malcolm X and Training Day, is born in Mount Vernon, New York. In 2002, for his performance as a corrupt cop in Training Day, Washington became the first black man to win the Best Actor Academy Award since 1964, when Sidney Poitier received the award for Lilies of the Field.

Washington graduated from Fordham University and studied acting at the American Conservatory Theatre. He first gained notice in Hollywood for his role as Dr. Philip Chandler on the popular TV medical drama St. Elsewhere, which originally aired from 1982 to 1988. Washington received his first Oscar nomination, in the Best Supporting Actor category, for his performance as the anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko in 1987’s Cry Freedom. He won his first Best Supporting Actor Oscar two years later, for his portrayal of a runaway slave who joins the Union Army in the 1989 Civil War-era film Glory.

During the 1990s, Washington established himself on Hollywood’s A-list as an actor who could shine in serious dramas as well as blockbuster thrillers. He collaborated with the director Spike Lee on Mo’ Better Blues (1990), the biopic Malcolm X (1992), which earned Washington a Best Actor Oscar nomination for the title role, and He Got Game (1998). He also appeared in such movies as Mississippi Masala (1991), Philadelphia (1993), with Tom Hanks, and the biopic The Hurricane (1996), which earned Washington another Best Actor Oscar nomination for his performance as a boxer falsely convicted of murder. He also starred in such hit thrillers as The Pelican Brief (1993) and Crimson Tide (1995).

After his historic win for Training Day, Washington went on to star in Man on Fire (2004) with Dakota Fanning, Spike Lee’s Inside Man (2006) with Jodie Foster, and American Gangster (2007) with Russell Crowe. Washington, who in 1996 was named People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive,” stepped behind the camera to direct 2002’s Antwone Fisher, in which he co-starred with Derek Luke in the story of a navy officer who confronts his troubled past. More recently, he helmed 2007’s The Great Debaters, in which he also starred as an inspiring debate coach at an African-American university in the 1930s.

THROWBACKTHISDAY; makes it 61 years and TBT Blog wish him a happy birthday