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Born in 1954 in Mount Vernon, New York, Washington spent several years as a Shakespearean actor on stage before making his film debut in 1981's Carbon Copy. He impressed on TV in St Elsewhere before boosting his profile further with A Soldier's Story. Since then Washington, who won an Oscar for 1989's glory, has often played real people with deadly seriousness and considerable presence, among them Steve Biko, Malcolm X and the boxer Rubin Carter. Indeed, he is often affectionately mocked in black culture as being the actor to take on any story of a bona fide black hero. In 1995 he made Quentin Tarantino squirm by confronting him about the racial slurs in the Crimson Tide's script.
