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Denzel Washington first became interested in acting as a young man while he was taking a semester off from his tenure at Fordham University. During his time off, Washington took a gig at a YMCA in Connecticut, working as a summer camp’s theater director, and it was there that his passion for acting finally ignited. He returned to school to study acting and landed some notable roles right away, appearing in plays by Eugene O’Neil and William Shakespeare. Washington’s first screen acting credit came in 1977 in a TV movie called “Wilma: The Wilma Rudolph Story.” He moved between TV, the stage, and films with aplomb, starring in a production of “Coriolanus” in 1979 and then the (decidedly not good) movie “Carbon Copy” in 1981<\/a>. Some, however, might say his big break came in 1982 when he was cast as Dr. Philip Chandler in the hit medical drama “St. Elsewhere.” He appeared in 118 episodes of that series through to 1988.<\/p>\n At that point, though, Washington had yet to play the lead character in a major motion picture, although he was keen to do so. He had already appeared in the 1984 Best Picture Oscar nominee “A Soldier’s Story” and had a supporting role in Sidney Lumet’s 1986 film “Power,” so it was high time he got top billing in something. In 1987, Washington finally landed a plum role in the form of Steve Biko, the real-life South African anti-apartheid activist, in Richard Attenborough’s “Cry Freedom,” snagging the actor an Academy Award nomination.<\/p>\n It seems, though, that the offerings were slim for a Black actor in the mid-1980s, even for a proven talent like Washington. Before he took the “Cry Freedom” gig, Washington was offered the title role in a rather offensive satire that, by his eye (and, really, to anyone whose eyes are connected to their brain) was incredibly racist. The title of the film was (sigh) “The N**** They Couldn’t Kill,” and Washington talked about it in a video interview from 2010<\/a>, hosted by the New York Times. By the title alone, you can tell this wasn’t a worthwhile project.<\/p>\n