Washington straight

He has two Oscars, a happy family and enough cash to paper the Brooklyn Bridge twice over. No wonder Denzel Washington is not quitting the movie game. He tells Donald Clarkehow he went from role model to anti-hero for his latest role in American Gangster

RIDLEY Scott's cracking American Gangster, which took 100 squillion dollars at the US box office last weekend, has an enigma at its heart. Frank Lucas - the film's (I guess) protagonist - makes his living in the dirtiest of businesses, but, despite the immorality about him, he always insists on carrying himself with dignity, minding his manners, dressing smartly and behaving courteously to business associates.

Can I get away with drawing a parallel between Frank Lucas and Denzel Washington? Probably not. For all the wretchedness of Hollywood, the movie business hardly bears serious comparison with the world of organised crime. And Washington, an actor adored by grannies and hoodies alike, has never, to my knowledge, blown a man's head off in broad daylight.

Still, Washington wears Frank's tidy clothes well. There has always been something worryingly sober about Denzel. He seems like a nice fellow, but you can't quite imagine him knocking back the Tio Pepe while dancing across the dining table.

"When I am in interviews I am on my best behaviour," he laughs. "I'm not going to be sitting here with a fifth of scotch staggering and saying, 'Waz yer name agin?' Look, I try to be professional. Though I do remember once, years ago, when we were shooting this film, For Queen and Country, in London. It was freezing and we drank some scotch - Jameson's."

Erm. That's an Irish whiskey.

"Oh is it? What? There's a difference? Well, you see how much I know about it."

Denzel is now 53 years old. He's spent two decades in Hollywood. He must have been tempted to, at least, dip a toe into the fleshpots.

"Look, I have a job to do. I just fortunately never got into the habit of drinking or drugging before work. Look, that stuff sells newspapers. God bless them, but there are a few more people in Hollywood than Lohan and Spears."

Mr Washington is, in fact, a much jollier fellow than you might expect. Curled up on a sofa in London's Dorchester Hotel, he bellows out his own punchlines and does a very decent job of pretending to find my jokes funny. He is slightly grey at the temples and now carries the most discreet of paunches, but he still has the perfectly symmetrical features that got him voted one of the most beautiful people in the world.

Why wouldn't he be merry? He is finishing work on The Great Debaters, his second film as director, and, just this morning, learnt that American Gangster, which co-stars Russell Crowe as the cop chasing Lucas, had beaten Bee Movie to the top spot at the box office.

"Yeah, can you believe it?" he raves. "It took $46 million at the weekend. That makes it the biggest opening for me and and for Russell. I guess I'm going to get offered a lot of films about gangsters now."

American Gangster is a very impressive exercise in legend-building. Frank Lucas, who is still alive and was present on the set, was the first gangster to organise both the importing and sale of heroin - he smuggled the drugs back in the coffins of soldiers killed in Vietnam - and the first African-American hoodlum to seriously challenge the hegemony of the Italian mob in New York.

Scott is careful to show the horrendous personal damage the drug trade caused - mothers are depicted dying beside their weeping babies - but the film does, nonetheless, find much to admire in its anti-hero. Lucas, whose dope was cheaper and purer than his rivals', insists on the importance of maintaining a brand name's reputation. He argues for hard work and for maintaining civil relations with clients. Much of what he recommends is probably taught in the first semester at Harvard Business School.

"That's what's interesting," Washington says. "It's a film that makes some people uncomfortable. They tell me they are ashamed that they like him. So I say, 'What did you like? Did you like it when he shot the guy in the head? Did you like it when the heroin killed the kids?'

"But, you know, I think if he had had a better education he would have turned out a very different person. He said to me once, 'You know, Denzel, there was nothing else I could do. I maybe could have got a job as a janitor. That's all I was educated for.'"

So, did Washington get any sense that Lucas regretted his earlier actions?

"Sometimes he does, I think. But after a certain age I guess you will justify what you have done and try to paint yourself as the victim. I told him, 'Frank, I am not here either to praise or to attack you.' After all, he has paid for his crimes in a number of ways: he's in a wheelchair and has the worst arthritis. I think he is living through a life sentence for his crimes. It's just that he spent only 15 years of it in jail."

American Gangster has had a troubled history. A script for the project was doing the rounds five years ago and, after several directors came and went, the production eventually ended up in the hands of Antoine Fuqua, who had coached Washington to an Oscar in 2001's Training Day. What happened next is the subject of conjecture, but it seems that Fuqua, after spending too much money and angering the wrong people, was shown the door by the studio.

"Yeah, I signed on when Antoine Fuqua came on board," he says. "And then after he was let go I heard no more about it for a few years. Then my agent phoned up and said, 'Ridley Scott wants to make it. He wants you and Russell Crowe.' That sounded good. I said, 'OK, let me go sit down with him.' He had all these images already prepared and seemed to know what he was doing. So I was in."

He must have had some qualms about continuing with the project after Fuqua's sacking; the two men had a successful professional relationship.

"He was the first person I called. I said, 'Look, this is what's happening.' He knew I'd walked away from the film two years ago. So he said: 'Yeah. Go do your thing. No problem.'"

Did he say it through gritted teeth?

"Well, I was on the phone so I couldn't tell."

I can't imagine many men would have the courage to order Denzel Washington not to take a starring role in a big movie. For all his cordiality, you sense that he can draw on significant reservoirs of resolve and determination.

Washington was raised in New York, the son of a minister and a beauty parlour owner. His parents split up when he was young and, fearful of the influence of corner-boys, his mother then sent him away to boarding school. It seems that he had little interest in movies as a youth and it was not until he got to Fordham University that he caught the acting bug.

"Yeah. That's about right," he says. "I started taking an acting class in college and I still didn't think much about movies. I was really into theatre. You are supposed to go to college and discover what you are supposed to be. But that hadn't happened. Then, when I began acting, people started telling me I was good. And, well, here we are."

Washington's big break came in the early 1980s when he secured a regular role in the television series St Elsewhere. In 1987 he played Steve Biko, the murdered South African activist, for Richard Attenborough in Cry Freedom. A best supporting actor Oscar for Glory followed two years later and Washington launched himself into a purple patch that included such pictures as Malcolm X, The Hurricane and Philadelphia. It does, indeed, sound quite easy, but there must have been slack periods in the early years.

"Yes. But when I look back on it now the really slow period was only a six-month period in 1980. October to May of that year I didn't get a job. My unemployment payments ran out and I applied for a job working for the county recreation department. Right then I was offered a role as Malcolm X in a play. That was supposed to run for a few weeks, but ran for six months. Then, right after that, I got another play and then St Elsewhere. It hasn't really stopped since."

It sounds as if he has lived a very stable life for an actor. Defying the Hollywood orthodoxy, he has, for example, been married to the same woman, the actor Paulette Pearson, for over two decades. They have four children, one of whom is a professional American footballer.

"Staying together that long is an achievement in any profession," he acknowledges. "It's coming on for 25 years and that takes a very patient woman, I can tell you. I take no credit whatsoever. We are a family and we are both basically very old-fashioned people. I can't imagine being a success at 25 and not then having this to come home to in the years since. She remains the best thing that ever happened to me."

So what's left to strive for? The Great Debaters, the story of an African-American debating team that defeated Harvard in 1935, will open in America towards the end of the year. He has two Oscars, a happy family and, I assume, enough cash to paper the Brooklyn Bridge twice over.

"Oh, look, I still stock up with food in case it all ends tomorrow," he laughs. "Have I done everything? Is there nothing left? I really like directing. I think I want to stick with that. The opportunity to work with all those talented people in different fields is great. Maybe I like doing that because I do feel I have done it all. But, hey, I ain't quitting."

American Gangster is in cinemas from November 16th