The last anti-hero

As bad guys go, the lying, cheating, coke-sniffing drunk in Robert Zemeckis' Flight is hard to beat. So who better to play him than squeaky-clean all-American Denzel Washington. TARA BRADYcatches up with the five-time Oscar nominee

IT’S JUST another day at the office for ace pilot Whip Whitaker. He wakes up with a naked air stewardess, he swigs from the bottom of a beer bottle to get rid of the taste of who-knows-what, he fights with his ex-wife on the phone, he snorts a little cocaine for breakfast and then he staggers out to fly a plane from Orlando to Atlanta.

The flight, alas, is doomed. Can Whip bust the aviation moves required to save the 102 souls onboard from a killer combination of engine failure and turbulence? And will the vodkas he just swiped from the service trolley affect his ability to land the plane?

Director Robert Zemeckis’ new film opens with a virtuoso crash sequence but the real tailspin comes in the aftermath as the pilot seeks to defend his actions. It’s a terrific part for a terrific actor, namely Denzel Washington, who today leaps to his feet and shakes my hand: “You just fly over to London?” I sure did.

The actor and the team behind Flight – the Oscar-nominated air disaster drama – simply couldn’t have planned it better: London is uncharacteristically blanketed in snow and air travel is, well, rather less fun than usual.

“Still safer than driving, you know?” notes the star, dryly.

I know. I fly most weeks but I don’t drive.

“What do you mean you don’t drive?” I can’t drive. It scares me. So I don’t.

Denzel Washington goes quiet then explodes with a wagging finger: “Drive a car. For crying out loud. You a chicken? You want to be a chicken forever?”

I’m minded to leave the building and jump behind the nearest available wheel. After all, what right-thinking judge would ever convict anyone on the back of that legal argument: Denzel Washington told me to.

Everybody loves Denzel. Everybody. He’s a good guy, we’re told, who dotes on his family and gives millions away to charities. What do Michelle Obama and Farc have in common? Answer: they love Denzel.

In 2006, when the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia wanted to exchange hostages for imprisoned guerrillas they submitted a very short list of approved negotiators: political firebrands Oliver Stone and Michael Moore were perhaps predictable candidates, but the two-time Oscar-winning actor was a surprise nominee. The American First Lady, meanwhile, cites Washington as her top choice to play Mr Obama should the relevant biopic arise.

The actor has signalled some interest in the idea, but ultimately, for Denzel Washington, it’ll come down to the script. It always does.

“I look for a good script and a good part, and that’s it,” says Washington.

“I won’t do a movie just because it’s a good idea. I never think ‘I’ll do the movie because I like page 16’. I never think ‘I’ll play a villain because I played a hero last time’. It’s always about the material and me interpreting the role.”

Back in the day, just as Denzel Washington was blossoming into a global brand, fans liked to think otherwise. Denzel-watchers speculated that the actor, a happily married, devout Christian and the son of a Pentecostal preacher, didn’t do love scenes, didn’t play drunk, didn’t do villains. African-American audiences reportedly jeered Milla Jovovich when she appeared, in the biblical sense, alongside Washington in Spike Lee’s He’s Got Game (1998).

“For a lot of black women, Denzel represents everything that’s right in the black man today,” Sonia Alleyne, editor of Black Elegance, told the Observer at the time. “I think they are looking at this new role almost as though he is being unfaithful to black women.”

Washington, for his part, dismisses the idea that he once avoided all but the most virtuous characters. “That was all just their opinion,” he grins. “I just wasn’t offered any bad guys until Training Day. Never. They didn’t come my way.”

Washington took home his second Oscar for Training Day’s crooked narcotics detective Alonzo Harris; he had previously scored an Academy Award in the Supporting Actor category for 1989’s Glory. Alonzo, however, had charm and swagger in his favour; Flight’s Whip is a lying, cheating, wholly unreliable coke-sniffing drunk. Throughout the picture, friends and colleagues – notably union rep Bruce Greenwood, attorney Don Cheadle and a reformed addict (Kelly Reilly) – repeatedly attempt to intervene; Whip, in turn, repeatedly reverts to type.

It’s Washington’s least likeable character study to date – and unsurprisingly has garnered him his fifth Oscar nomination – but the actor doesn’t necessarily see it that way.

“You have to like the guy. You couldn’t do the job otherwise. No character is completely heroic or completely virtuous.

“I’m on the inside looking out. The audience are on the outside looking in. They get to see the finished product and say ‘Oh, I like him or I don’t’. I guess you could say that when you’re reading a script. But all I knew was that this was a very interesting script and a very interesting character. And when he’s mean, I have to be mean. I can’t sit there thinking, ‘well, I’ll be the nice mean guy’. Or say, ‘I don’t really want to sniff coke; can we just switch it to smoking a cigarette?’ I can’t be semi-mean.”

Washington gained weight to play Whip and, director Robert Zemeckis tells me later, “took copious, copious notes”. Film-makers are often heard to praise Washington’s scholarly approach. That may explain why so many of them are keen to work with him again and again.

“I’ve worked with Ed Zwick three times: you just reminded me, I got to call him back. I’ve worked with Jonathan Demme twice. I’ve worked with Spike [Lee] four times and Tony Scott five times.”

What can this coterie of directors have in common? “They call!” Washington roars with laughter: “They just call.” And that’s enough? “Well, just because they call, doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll do the job.

“Spike wanted to do Inside Man 2 and I was like ‘Hmm’. I just didn’t get the script. I don’t want to be doing it to be doing it. That’s not to say I wouldn’t work with him again. I absolutely would. There’s no one magic thing about directors. I don’t believe in magic. It’s because you like them and they’re good at what they do and because you’ve had success together. That’s a magic three things.”

Washington knows the other side of the camera well having directing two award-winning films, The Great Debaters (2007) and Antwone Fisher (2002).Which of his many returning collaborators does he sound like on set?

“Oh, I steal from every single one of them,” says Washington. “Guys like Bob Zemeckis and Jonathan Demme are real, real relaxed and create a really wonderful environment for you to feel creative. Tony and Ridley Scott create these amazing pictures. I’m an homage to all those people.”

It’s interesting to note how many of “those people” maintain a maverick status within the larger Hollywood machine. The same can equally be said of Washington, an actor who doesn’t hang out with other celebrities and who rarely sounds like an industry insider. “I don’t pay attention to what other actors are doing,” he tells me. “I don’t sell movies and I don’t operate studios. I don’t do movies for awards.” Ask him about taking orders from directors and he laughs incredulously. “I don’t. I can’t recall an occasion when a director has told me what to do.

“That’s got nothing to do with acting; that’s to do with my personality. Nobody’s going to bark orders at me. Twenty years ago or now. That’s just not going to happen. You bark and I’ll bite back. It’s like this: the time you worry about flying is when you’re on the ground. If I don’t feel right about a director, I’m not going to wait to board the plane to find out. If you hear somebody’s a jerk, then don’t work with them.”

Does he go to movies? “No. I hardly ever go. I’m not a real movie buff.”

Theatre, he explains, is far more his thing. He excitedly rattles off his favourite productions and performances of recent years: “August: Osage County. What a play. I’m really curious to see what they do with that as a film. John Lithgow in All My Sons, Philip Seymour Hoffman in Death of a Salesman – great plays, great performances.”

The stage, says Washington – who won a Tony in 2010 – is very much the family business. “My wife is doing a play in Atlanta right now. My daughter Olivia is a senior at college; she’s been studying theatre for four years.”

Has he helped her with homework or given her advice? “Oh yeah. Study theatre. All the actors I love come from the theatre. So you want to be an actor you need to be a theatre actor first.” Performance, he notes, is etched into the bloodline.

“My mother sang in the church and my father was a preacher, so he was a performer of sorts. My mother plays piano. My aunt played the organ. And my mother owned a beauty shop which was a whole other kind theatre. I didn’t think about it back then. But in retrospect, it was always there. And then Olivia’s grandmother on the other side sang opera. So Olivia was never going to escape.”

Washington met his wife Paulette, an actor and concert pianist, on the set of Wilma, a 1977 TV movie. The couple married in 1983 and renewed their vows in 1995 with Archbishop Desmond Tutu officiating. They have four children: John David, a pro-football player, Katia, a Yale graduate, and twins Olivia and Malcolm.

So when Paulette was unable to attend the Golden Globes earlier this month, Denzel easily found a willing replacement.

“My daughter Katia would never go; she’s a real behind-the-scenes person,” he says. “But Olivia really wanted to come. It was a good introduction for her. I felt like her agent. I didn’t know half the people there. She knew more people than I did. She was filling me in. She was like ‘Dad, that’s so-and-so, how do you not know that?’ I thought, ‘Man, I’m at the Golden Globes with my daughter who’s an actress’. Life is amazing.”

* Flight opens February 1st. See Monday’s Irish Times for an interview with director Robert Zemeckis