Top 150 Denzel Washington Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “People have said to me for a long time, “Man you’re funny.” I say, “Well, I’m quick,” but being funny on purpose, take after take – that’s why I said for me it was new territory, and so by improvising something might come out that might be good. And it’s film, so they can cut it if it isn’t.”

— Denzel Washington

102. “Michelle Pfeiffer hasn’t been finding a lot of work recently because she doesn’t like what a woman her age is offered. That’s a real double standard. You get Sean Connery, who gets older and older, still playing opposite young ladies, but it doesn’t work the other way around.”

— Denzel Washington

103. “Fundamentally, the most important thing is to get the film made for me and to get as many people to see it as possible. And if I help that, then – I know I help that, let’s put it that way. I do know that I help that. It is called show business.”

— Denzel Washington

104. “When people protest and are upset with a movie, it becomes a big hit. They hated Passion of The Christ, it worked out pretty well for the box office. So let’s get that going.”

— Denzel Washington

105. “When people say “What do you want people to get from this movie?” I say, “Well, it depends on what they bring to it.” I don’t try to decide what people should get from it or why. I don’t do a part for those kinds of reasons.”

— Denzel Washington

106. “I’m from around Tennessee. I ran away when I was 12 years old and I ain’t never looked back.”

— Denzel Washington

107. “I had a lot of success from the start. I never really was tested for long periods of time. I got my first professional job while I was a senior in college. I signed with the William Morris Agency before I graduated.”

— Denzel Washington

108. “I’m not interested in being a celebrity; I’m interested in being a better actor and a better director.”

— Denzel Washington

109. “I think we’re fascinated by gangsters and that whole lifestyle and crossing the line. We get sort of stuck in our normal lives, if you will, and you want to be bigger than life and I think people somehow live through these sorts of characters.”

— Denzel Washington

110. “Denzel Washington: I like the collaboration, I like seeing people do well, so I really plan to direct the rest of my days.”

— Denzel Washington

111. “One good thing about acting in film is that it’s good therapy.”

— Denzel Washington

112. “I and haven’t been unemployed for 20 years. I’m an exception to the rule.”

— Denzel Washington

113. “I actually don’t hang out with any celebrities. My closest friends are old friends. And my real close friends, none of them are actors.”

— Denzel Washington

114. “My mother used to tell me: “You gotta smile more. Because if you don’t smile, the way you look at people, they’ll think you’re mad at them.””

— Denzel Washington

115. “I made a commitment to completely cut out drinking and anything that might hamper me from getting my mind and body together. And the floodgates of goodness have opened upon me – spiritually and financially.”

— Denzel Washington

116. “You never know how you’re going to affect people.”

— Denzel Washington

117. “Black or white good parts are hard to come by. A good actor with a good opportunity has a shot; without the opportunity it doesn’t matter how good you are.”

— Denzel Washington

118. “I don’t concern myself with award. I’d been to the party enough times to know it really didn’t matter.”

— Denzel Washington

119. “Where I think the most work needs to be done is behind the camera, not in front of it.”

— Denzel Washington

120. “Raising the standard of the work, not complaining about somebody not voting.”

— Denzel Washington

121. “Sometimes when you’re the good guy, you’re sort of trapped. “Oh, he can’t say that.” And even when you’re playing a real person like a Steven Biko, you’re sort of stuck within those confines. So yeah, bad guys do have more fun.”

— Denzel Washington

122. “If you take the time and put in the effort to write your own material and absolutely refuse to be denied the right to make your film it is difficult whatever colour you are.”

— Denzel Washington

123. “A man once told me that you step out of your door in the morning, and you are already in trouble. The only question is are you on top of that trouble or not?”

— Denzel Washington

124. “Acting, it’s not my life, my children and my family, that’s life. I’ll get up every morning, God willing, for that.”

— Denzel Washington

125. “My mother never gave up one me. I messed up in school so much they were sending me home, but my mother sent me right back.”

— Denzel Washington

126. “My ultimate life dream project is my kids. My family.”

— Denzel Washington

127. “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?”

— Denzel Washington

128. “I don’t look back, no. Maybe when I’m older; people say, ‘What’s your favorite film?’ I say, ‘My next one.’ I’m not interested in sitting around; I just don’t, never have.”

— Denzel Washington

129. “I’m a parent. I think we’re responsible for the problems that young people have. I believe that. I don’t blame them for any of it. I blame us for what we haven’t done as mothers and fathers, not sticking together as a unit.”

— Denzel Washington

130. “If you have an enemy, then learn and know your enemy, don’t just be mad at him or her.”

— Denzel Washington

131. “Dakota Fanning is a child, but she is a wonderful actor. I don’t know what a child actor is. She’s an actor who’s a child.”

— Denzel Washington

132. “I think the bottom of the totem pole is African-American women, or women of colour. I think they get the least opportunities in Hollywood.”

— Denzel Washington

133. “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.”

— Denzel Washington

134. “Any good piece of material like Shakespeare ought to be open to reinterpretation.”

— Denzel Washington

135. “I read a ton of scripts. I read a lot of scripts, and you read one, and first of all, you felt like you read it in 14 minutes, because you’re turning the pages so fast you can’t wait to see what’s going to happen.”

— Denzel Washington

136. “A film is just like a muffin. You make it. You put it on the table. One person might say, Oh, I don’t like it. One might say it’s the best muffin ever made. One might say it’s an awful muffin. It’s hard for me to say. It’s for me to make the muffin.”

— Denzel Washington

137. “There are films that I don’t like, and then someone will come up to me and say it’s their favorite movie. The movies belong to the people. You make them and you put them out. For me, I love the process of making films. For me, my favorite film is always my next one.”

— Denzel Washington

138. “As an actor, you’re a color of paint on someone else’s palette. But as a director, it’s your canvas and you make the painting you want to make.”

— Denzel Washington

139. “Every punch that’s thrown is mine. Every punch that’s caught, I catch...”

— Denzel Washington

140. “That’s what I tell young actors. “You don’t have to compromise. Go do some theater and wait for an appropriate role.””

— Denzel Washington

141. “Everybody has a job to do. There are people in Iraq on both sides of this war who do what they do for religious reasons, and they feel with God on their side. Some people are good at annihilating people. Maybe that’s their gift.”

— Denzel Washington

142. “I still have my unemployment books and I remember when I worked for the sanitation department and the post office.”

— Denzel Washington

143. “My role 14 years ago in Richard III – that was the first time I played a bad guy and learned a lot about it – they have all the fun!”

— Denzel Washington

144. “I always think it’s not what we know that’s terrifying; it’s what we don’t know. That’s sort of pervasive with everything in life.”

— Denzel Washington

145. “I wasn’t allowed to go to movies when I was kid; my father was a minister. 101 Dalmatians and King of Kings, that was the extent of it.”

— Denzel Washington

146. “The only reason I’m acting in films I direct is to get the money to make them, quite frankly, it’s not what I’m interested in doing.”

— Denzel Washington

147. “There’s always got to be room for what you might call benign corruption. Nobody blames a man who steals food to feed his starving children, but on the other hand, somebody who picks up a badge and takes an oath to serve and protect; we do expect a certain level of essential honesty.”

— Denzel Washington

148. “Some said America took a step forward electing a black president. In light of the unconstitutiona l expansion of powers, lack of transparency and fueling the fires of unrest that clearly hasn’t been the case. Vote based on merits, not to fill a racial quota.”

— Denzel Washington

149. “What’s a celebrity anyway? Paris Hilton’s a celebrity. I’m just a working actor.”

— Denzel Washington

150. “There’s things that I can do as an actor that I couldn’t do in any other form of life and I’ve got a strange personality. But film requires strange people, so I’ve got a nice comfy home.”

— Denzel Washington