Credits: Far Out / Gabriel Hutchinson Photography
Sat 14 February 2026 1:00, UK
Recently, some folks in internet-land have discovered something about Denzel Washington, or more so his career, which is that he has up to this point handily made exactly 52 films, allowing you, should you so wish, to watch one Denzel movie every week for an entire year.
Now, whether or not you would want to do this is a matter for discussion. For one thing, there are so many good films out there that don’t star the New York legend that are worth your time, off the top of my head, Scarecrow, A Matter of Life and Death and Ace in the Hole, for example. But to counter that, there are also a lot of excellent Denzel Washington movies too, so maybe it is indeed a worthwhile exercise.
And because he’s been at it for so long, you’ll also get your money’s worth when it comes to different genres, too. Want some gruesome vigilante action? Well then there’s The Equalizer and Man on Fire. Courtroom drama? Try Philadelphia and The Pelican Brief. Disaster movie fan? Unstoppable and Flight will suit your needs. The man has pretty much done it all, save for Superheroes and maybe outright comedy, which wouldn’t really suit him at all.
Maybe it’s because we see him so often in a kind of lone wolf capacity that it makes it hard to imagine Washington in a more romantic scenario, but that was originally something that would have made up part of the aforementioned The Pelican Brief with Julia Roberts back in 1993, before it was dropped.
Based on a John Grisham novel, originally in the book, Washington and Roberts’ characters were lovers, but that was jettisoned pretty quickly, with Washington explaining: “I felt, and I think (director) Alan Pakula felt as well, that it just didn’t work. I know Alan didn’t think it worked, because it wasn’t in the screenplay. So it wasn’t like we tried to avoid it or anything. It was just bad taste.”
Changes also had to be made to promotional material for the film, not least the original poster, which for some reason only showed Julia Roberts, with only Washington’s name at the bottom. Following an intervention from Denzel, the next iteration showed Roberts at a computer with him looking over her shoulder. He was at pains to say that nobody got upset about it, but did explain at the time: “It wasn’t a legal problem. Let’s just say that I sat down with the head of the studio, and we worked it out.”
Hastily revised posters and all, the film was a big success on release, bringing in $200m against a budget of less than $50m, no doubt spurred on by the fact that at the time Julia Roberts was probably the leading female actor in the world thanks to Pretty Woman, Sleeping With The Enemy and Hook. John Grisham adaptations were also all the rage in the 1990s, with The Rainmaker, A Time to Kill and Tom Cruise’s The Firm all cleaning up at the box office.
Some 30 years on, Washington is still going strong and has some huge projects on the way, not least a rumoured fourth instalment of The Equaliser franchise, a role in Marvel’s much-anticipated Black Panther 3 and a new Netflix movie alongside Robert Pattinson titled Here Comes the Flood, which will be released later this year.