Denzel Washington Play Quotations

As an actor in the theater you're taught that you never play a bad guy. You have to love who you are. You can't say, "Oh, I'm a bad guy." How do you play that?

Acting is like music and you improvise. It's like jazz, there's no rhyme or reason to it. It's not a plan. You practice to music and you just play it.

I honestly believe, and I've said it many times, that the universal stems from the specific and I can't walk around with a performance and ask everyone how they feel about it, but if noble is an opinion that people have I'll accept that. I've been asked many times why I don't play bad guys, or heavies, and I would do it, absolutely, in a second, just haven't been offered any so... if anybody has a script out there tonight I'm more than willing.

I just do what I feel and what I like. I don't necessarily censor or feel an obligation to have a particular moral standard - I'm willing to wallow in the mud, if necessary. It appears as if there seems to be a consistency in result, but maybe that has as much to do with the roles I choose as it does with how I play them. I do what pleases me.

I just try to be honest and true to the character and play the part.

A part of me still says, 'Maybe, Denzel, you're supposed to preach. Maybe you're still compromising.' I've had an opportunity to play great men and, through their words, to preach. I take what talent I've been given seriously, and I want to use it for good.

Part of the reason I liked the idea of doing the film was that it was very wordy. I was getting good practice playing Brutus. So 'Inside Man' felt a bit like Shakespeare goes to the streets or something.