Denzel Wants To Be Clint

Denzel Washington is one of our best actors, but he’s got no qualms about saying that what he really wants to do is direct. The Huffington Post has an interview with the director and star of The Great Debaters, who says he’s hoping to pattern his career after Clint Eastwood.

“Clint Eastwood’s my hero,” Denzel Washington says. “That’s the model. He’s the guy.” At this stage of his career, the two-time Oscar winner is most interested in going the actor-turned-director route, citing George Clooney, Sean Penn and Ben Affleck as examples. “There’s a generation of us now that are moving in that direction.”

He likes the idea of staying behind the camera, rather than pulling double duty as filmmaker and performer as he did in his 2002 directorial debut “Antwone Fisher” and now “The Great Debaters.”

Washington wanted to stay behind the camera for his latest film, but Harvey Weinstein, whose company put up the money along with Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films, wanted to ensure the movie had the star power of the strikingly handsome, 6-foot leading man _ and upped the budget to have him in front of camera too.

“I understand the business of it. And I said all right, all right,” Washington says, adding matter-of-factly that casting himself is “not bad casting.”

While he was happy to get a Golden Globe nomination for his muscular performance as a Harlem drug lord in “American Gangster,” Washington sounds particularly tickled by the best-picture Globe bid for “The Great Debaters.” He says it felt like the first time he received a best-actor Academy Award nod 20 years ago, for “Cry Freedom.”

“So I am excited about it. It’s like: Wow, OK, I’ve tried this new career, which is frightening enough as it is _ to jump out there. To be successful in one area and then jump out there, you’re really sticking your chin out there,” he says, then imagining what people might be thinking: “`Oh really? Oh, does he? Well let’s just see.’”