Denzel Washington

With Jack Nicholson having apparently hung up his shades for good, Denzel Washington has a strong claim to be the most decorated actor currently working in Hollywood.

Emerging in the 1970s as a formidable stage performer, Washington picked up the first of his nine Oscar nominations in 1988 playing activist Steve Biko in the apartheid drama Cry Freedom, losing the Best Supporting Actor statuette to Sean Connery and his unaccountable Scottish accent in The Untouchables.

In 1990 he was nominated again in Supporting Actor and won for the movie Glory, a historical epic which picked up five nominations in total. He was only the fourth black actor to win an Oscar at that point, following Hattie McDaniel in 1940, Sidney Poitier in 1963 and Louis Gossett Jr. in 1982.

In 1993 he had his first nomination in the Leading Actor category for his portrayal of civil rights activist Malcolm X in Spike Lee’s film of the same name. One of the defining performances of his career, many to this day believe Washington should have won this Oscar, which ultimately went to Al Pacino for Scent of a Woman.

By now a certified movie star, Washington picked up his fourth Oscar nomination in 2000 for boxing drama The Hurricane, again in the Leading Actor category. Kevin Spacey was that year’s winner for American Beauty.

Finally in 2002, Washington won his second Oscar, this time as a Leading Actor for the crime thriller Training Day. This made him the second black actor to win this category after Poitier, to whom he paid tribute in his emotional acceptance speech that night.

The rest of the 2000s arguably represented the peak of Washington’s power as a movie star, with massive box office successes including Man on Fire, Inside Man and American Gangster. However, his next Oscar nomination didn’t arrive until 2013, when he played an alcoholic pilot in the Robert Zemeckis drama Flight. This time the winner was Daniel Day Lewis, beating Washington to the three Oscars club for his performance in Lincoln.

In the late 2010s, Washington started reaching back to his theatrical routes, using his clout to develop a series of feature adaptations of plays by August Wilson. The first of these was Fences, for which he received his seventh Oscar nomination. He also directed the film. The winning actor that year was Casey Affleck for Manchester By The Sea.

The following year he was nominated again, somewhat surprisingly this time for the relatively little-seen legal drama Roman J. Israel. He was never going to win for this one, which ultimately went to Gary Oldman for The Darkest Hour.

In 2022 he received his last Oscar nomination to date for another theatrical adaptation, Joel Coen’s take on The Tragedy of Macbeth. That one infamously went to Will Smith for King Richard, the night of the slap heard around the world.

In 2024, Washington was tipped to hit his tenth Oscar nomination for his supporting turn in Gladiator II. However, the film underperformed with awards bodies and ultimately he did not receive a nomination this time.