Denzel Washington wasn’t always known by the name that we’ve heard dropped in movies trailers and called out from Oscar podiums for decades.
He broached the subject during an appearance Tuesday on Jimmy Kimmel Live, after the host remarked that there are currently four NFL players named Denzel.
David Lee/A24
“And this is how you know they were named after me. My name is not pronounced Děn-ZĚL,” Washington said of the name the way moviegoers know it. He added, “My name is pronounced DĚN-zǝl,” emphasizing the first syllable and pronouncing the second syllable so that it rhymed with “lull.”
Wait, what?!
“I’m Denzel Jr.,” the actor continued, pronouncing it the way it had been intended. “My father’s Denzel Hayes Washington Sr. I’m Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. My mother would say, ‘Denzel,’ and we’d both show up.”
It was Washington’s mother, the late Lennis Washington, who gave him the moniker as it is said today: “So she said, ‘From now on, you’re Denzel.’ That’s how it got pronounced Denzel.”
However you say his name, Washington, 70, has been one of Hollywood’s top leading men for decades.
The Highest 2 Lowest actor revealed last month in a conversation with costar A$AP Rocky and director Spike Lee, that he’s “tired of movies.”
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Washington quipped that he’d appeared in “too many” over his career. His first TV and movie credits date back to TV movies in the late ’70s.
Lee said his latest film, a reinterpretation of legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 crime procedural High and Low, would probably be his final one with Washington. The two have previously collaborated on four other films, including 1990’s Mo’ Better Blues, 1992’s Malcolm X, 1998’s He Got Game, and, in 2006, Inside Man.
Washington has said he plans to retire after a few more titles, although he later clarified the statement to specify that he would still appear in movies that have “a level of interest for me.”
See the actor’s full conversation with Kimmel above. The part about his name begins at about 7:37.
