FILM

Denzel Washington seems rather underwhelmed by his latest film ‘Safe House’. Robin Askew politely bungs a few questions at the Hollywood stalwart anyway.

There's a line in Denzel Washington's new film, 'Safe House', that's guaranteed to get a laugh at every screening. Someone describes his character as "the black Dorian Gray". The description could equally apply to Washington himself. Still alarmingly young-looking at 57, he's come a very long way since his first screen role, which the IMDB describes as 'Alley Mugger #1 (uncredited)' in Michael Winner's 'Death Wish' back in 1974. But despite all the acclaim and awards, which include Oscars for 'Glory' and 'Training Day', he admits he nearly jacked it all in quite recently. "I went through a phase where I was sick of acting. I was really tired of it. I didn't want to do it anymore. I was bored with it."

It seems a belated mid-life crisis prompted this soul-searching, which finds expression in the language of motivational mumbo-jumbo. "When I turned 50, I looked in the mirror and I realised that this isn't a dress rehearsal. This is life. And I don't know how much more of it I'm gonna have. And even if I have 50 more years, I probably won't remember the last 20 or 30 of 'em anyway."

The key to recommitting himself as an actor was his Tony Award-winning return to the stage two years ago opposite Viola Davies in the 2010 Broadway revival of 'Fences'. "I want to do good work," he affirms. "And I want to do good work with people I want to work with."

Which brings us to 'Safe House'. Now Washington himself is first to admit that this didn't exactly qualify as 'good work' on first inspection. "I wasn't that impressed with the screenplay," he says bluntly, prompting a sharp intake of breath from the PR minders. "I didn't think it was good enough."

What he did like was 34-year-old Swedish director Daniel Esponosa's previous film, the crime drama 'Snabba Cash' (unreleased in the UK). "If I hadn't met Daniel, I probably wouldn't have done this movie because it didn't interest me that much," he elaborates. "I didn't think it was that good. But I liked Daniel. When you get the chance to work with people that you like and people who are talented, that's rare. I don't know how many more movies I'm going to get the opportunity to make and I don’t want to look back and go, 'Man, I just kind of floated through that one' and 'I just did that one for the money', or something like that. I want to be able to say that I worked as hard as I could and I did the best work that I was able to do."

'Safe House' casts him as a sociopathic rogue ex-CIA agent - and let's face it, Nasty Denzel is always more entertaining than Noble Denzel - who surrenders and winds up in a Cape Town safe house overseen by rookie Ryan Gosling. The setting was changed from Rio, partly to avoid comparison with 'Man on Fire', but also because "from my character's perspective, it was going to be easier for me to blend in in a black country than in a brown country."

This is a film that's very aware that it is taking place in a world of Wikileaks and waterboarding, where it's not always easy to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. That's not something US audiences are traditionally comfortable with, is it? "What is it over here? MI5? MI6? Who knows what they do. We don't know what they do. We know that we want to be protected. We claim that we want them to be fair and don't torture people. But I think that on 9/11 in New York, everybody was for torture. They wanted to get to the bottom of whoever it was. The further away you get from that, you want your country to play fair. I don't think it would have made sense for President Obama to come on air and say, 'Oh by the way, next Tuesday we're going to shoot Bin Laden.' They're going to do it the way they're going to do it. You know, it's a dirty business."

As far as his work ethic is concerned, Washington insists that "I take my work seriously but I don't take myself too seriously". His inspiration comes from a rather unlikely source: James Cagney's autobiography 'Cagney by Cagney'. "He talked about going to the studio, working his 12 hour day, taking off his costume, getting in the car and going home. Most of my work is done before we start shooting. Preparation work. We play the scene, I take the clothes off and I go home. I have a meal, I relax, watch a little television or something, and then I might work for an hour and a half. Then I go to bed. You know, I don't lose sleep over it. I've been doing it too long…"

'Safe House' opens on Fri 24 Feb. See review here and Events Search for screening details.

Copyright Robin Askew 2012