Multiple award-winning actor Denzel Washington has sparked retirement rumours after he said that he needs to feel inspired by a filmmaker in order to take up a project as there are “very few films left” that would interest him to go to a movie set.
“The Equalizer” star, whose career spans over 40 years across cinema, TV and theatre, said Ridley Scott was a big draw for him boarding the cast of the director’s “Gladiator II”.
In the upcoming film, Washington plays Macrinus, a power broker, under whose tutelage Paul Mescal’s Lucius — the grandson of Rome’s former emperor Marcus Aurelius and son of Lucilla –resolves to fight as a gladiator.
“There are very few films left for me to make that I’m interested in, and I have to be inspired by the filmmaker, and I was tremendously inspired by Ridley,” Washington, 69, told Empire magazine in an interview.
“Gladiator II”, a follow-up to Scott’s 2000 hit “Gladiator” starring Russell Crowe, reunites the master director with Washington after the 2007 thriller action film “American Gangster”.
“We had a great go-round, the first go-round and here we are. He’s engaged. He’s excited about life and his next film. He’s an inspiration. We should all want to feel like that at 86,” the actor added.
Washington made his film debut in 1981 with Michael Schultz’s “Carbon Copy”, in which he portrayed the role of Roger Porter alongside George Segal, Susan Saint James and Jack Warden.