You don’t tell Denzel anything. You can really rub him the wrong way by telling him something,” says Allen Hughes, who with twin brother Albert directed Denzel Washington in Friday’s post-apocalyptic action flick “The Book of Eli.”
Allen Hughes learned his lesson the hard way. “I said something to him on the set once, and it was probably the third time someone told him, but I didn’t know that because I was coming back from lunch,” he says. “All [he] did was yell out, ‘38!’
“Denzel’s son, who happened to be on the set that day, was sitting there laughing. I asked his son, ‘What does that mean?’ And he said, ‘38 films.’ I shut the f – – – up with the hurry-up-ness at that point.”
Anyone’s who’s been around Hollywood long enough knows there are three immutable rules in show business. Never work with children or animals. Never tell Jude Law the baby is his. And do not bring anything less than your A-game with Washington.
The actor is one of the most intense, demanding and intelligent actors around, and those qualities have earned him a reputation as prickly among some.
“He’s like Obi-Wan on steroids with a little attitude and swagger,” says Hughes, who first broke onto the scene with 1993’s “Menace II Society.” “He’s allergic to bulls – – -, and that’s the problem. He’s a gentleman and for the most part very humble, but once you start popping bulls – – -, he’s gonna shut you down immediately, whether it be an interviewer, a director or a writer.”
Love him or fear him, those in Hollywood may not have to worry about Washington for too much longer. After “The Book of Eli,” the actor has “Unstoppable,” a Tony Scott train-disaster epic, in the can. But beyond that, audiences should get used to seeing him on the big screen less often.
In person, however, is another story.
Despite earning as much as $20 million a movie, Washington tells The Post that he’s growing weary of making “formulaic” movies, and he wants to get back to his first love: theater.
His career began with a well-received production of “Othello” while he was still a student at Fordham in the late 1970s, and an award-winning turn off-Broadway in “A Soldier’s Play” (later filmed as “A Soldier’s Story”).
After living in LA for decades, Washington and his wife — actress Pauletta Pearson Washington — are planning to relocate to their Central Park West apartment in time for his Broadway run in August Wilson’s “Fences,” opening in April. Washington will play Troy Maxson, a married sanitation worker in 1950s Pittsburgh. It’s the same role that earned James Earl Jones a Tony when the play debuted in 1987.
“My priorities have changed,” Washington says. “The first thing I want to do is theater. The second is direct movies. Acting in movies is now No. 3 on the list.”
“I don’t blame him,” Hughes says. “Here’s a guy who’s so gifted and blessed, acting is not challenging enough for him. He needs constant stimulation. I can imagine he’s doing certain kind of programmers for Hollywood, certain kinds of formulaic movies, I’m sure it’s not fulfilling for him.”
Washington says he’s put off performing in more stage shows for the sake of his four children. Now that the youngest two are freshmen in college, he’s free to move to New York and return to the theater.
“I always felt bad with eight shows a week — you can’t get home. I always felt bad doing [a Broadway run],” he says. “[2005’s] ‘Julius Caesar’ was the first time I came back to New York in a long time, because of the children.”
The move to Gotham will also allow Pauletta to return to acting and directing. She was forced to drop out of the 1985 Broadway musical “Jerry’s Girls” when she got pregnant with the couple’s first child and ever since has put her ambitions on hold for the sake of the family.
“She really sacrificed her career for mine,” Washington says.
(Don’t shed any tears for the couple, financially. While the days of $20 million paychecks for anyone in the movie business are probably over, name stars who perform limited Broadway runs can earn $100,000 a week.)
During Washington’s “Julius Caesar” run, the actor often spent up to an hour after the show signing autographs for fans at the stage door. The crowds grew so large that Washington ultimately restricted autographs to Playbills only.
“There were like 10,000 people out there some nights,” he says. “So I just decided, if you actually came to the show, I’d sign your Playbill.”
The same policy may not hold true for “Fences.”
“I might be too old to stand out there for a half an hour now. I might have to do it in a wheelchair,” he jokes.
Washington says one place you won’t find him after the show is out at bars. To make it through the eight performances a week, he has a simple strategy: “Don’t drink, go to bed and stretch — there. The week is brutal. I’m not 27 anymore. It’s not like when we were young, doing the play then going out all night, then sleep two hours and go right back to it. Those days are over. I go to bed.”
That doesn’t sound like the typical movie star doing a Broadway drive-by. (Cough, Jeremy Piven, cough.) But then, Washington never set out to be a “movie star.” He once told Oprah that the title was just a label people put on you until they give you another: has-been.
“I never imagined a film career,” he says. “When I started acting in 1975, I was at Lincoln Center, and I thought, I’ll make it to Broadway one day, and I’ll make $650 a week. Even the movies I was looking at at the time — they were shooting ‘Taxi Driver’ up the street — I looked at film acting like that, as opposed to being a ‘movie star.’ We were focusing on the fundamental work of an actor. I never thought, ‘Let me get out of this real quick so I can go to LA.’”
When he eventually did break into films, he says his career was guided, in part, by advice Sidney Poitier once gave him.
“He would say, ‘It’s almost more important what you say no to than what you say yes to, especially early on,’ “ Washington recalls. “The first three or four films you make will determine how you’re perceived in this industry. I was very lucky to work with Norman Jewison and Sidney Lumet and Richard Attenborough.”
He’s still careful about what he says “yes” to, though he admits he’s made some mistakes along the way. He turned down the Brad Pitt role in David Fincher’s “Seven” and the lead in “Michael Clayton.”
“I knew it was a great script, but I was a little nervous working with a first-time director,” Washington says of Tony Gilroy’s “Clayton.” “Didn’t look like he lost any sleep waiting for me.”
As for “The Book of Eli,” Washington says he agreed to do it because of the film’s spiritual themes. (He’s read the Bible cover to cover at least twice.) Washington plays a machete-wielding loner who fights his way across a hostile, post-
apocalyptic land to deliver a sacred book to the West Coast.
“Six months before we started shooting, I was with him alone in his back yard and I said, ‘D, I gotta ask you. Before we embark on this journey together, you said you have no interest in acting anymore. But I gotta know that you’re not just doing this for the money,’” Allen Hughes says.
“He said, ‘No, brother. This movie is different. This is part of my life’s journey. This is not just a paycheck.’”
Early in pre-production, the studio, Warner Bros., insisted that “Eli” star an A-lister, because the premise and religious themes might be a tough sell to audiences otherwise. Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Johnny Depp were considered. Ultimately, Allen Hughes suggested Washington, whom he’d first met in 1993 at the Paris airport luggage carousel on the way back from Cannes, and the studio agreed. But not without some hesitation.
“I’m not gonna front — Denzel’s black,” Hughes says. “His numbers are great, but internationally, does black travel? That’s what really was going on. [The studio] was crunching the numbers.”
None of those calculations were likely done by the producers of “Fences.” You might have to make Denzel money to afford a prime ticket.
DENZEL’S SKELS
Denzel Washington is America’s premier screen bad-ass, but it wasn’t always that way. His first national role came as Dr. Philip Chandler on “St. Elsewhere” in 1982, but shortly thereafter, he got some life-
changing advice from a casting director who suggested he quit playing sensitive roles and try something with an edge. “Her advice gave me my movie career,” Washington says. Take a look back at five of Washington’s most memorable rogues.
2007
AMERICAN GANGSTER
Based on the true story of Harlem drug runner Frank Lucas. Washington controls the streets and dispatches rival gangsters with a swagger.
Bad-ass rating: 5
2004
MAN ON FIRE
An ex-CIA operative shoots up the whole of Mexico City in a quest to retrieve a girl kidnapped on his watch.
Bad-ass rating: 4
2001
TRAINING DAY
Washington took home an Oscar for his role as a sadistic, corrupt cop who, at one point, makes his green partner (Ethan Hawke) “get wet” on PCP.
Bad-ass rating: 5
2000
REMEMBER THE TITANS
Racial tensions boil over for a hard-nosed, black football coach and his newly integrated team during the early 1970s.
Bad-ass rating: 3
1992
MALCOLM X
Denzel spits righteous fire (“We did not land on Plymouth Rock — Plymouth Rock landed on us!”) as the controversial black-power leader.
Bad-ass rating: 4