Rise to Fame
A ruptured Achilles in 2013 ended his football career and started his acting one. He'd played running back for the St. Louis Rams as an undrafted free agent, drifted through NFL Europe and the short-lived United Football League, and spent the whole time keeping his acting ambitions secret. Part of that was practical: he didn't want people connecting him to his father. Ballers on HBO gave him a platform, but BlacKkKlansman in 2018 made the argument. Spike Lee cast him as real-life detective Ron Stallworth, the film won the Cannes Grand Prix, and he got a Golden Globe nomination.
In the Spotlight
Christopher Nolan cast him in Tenet after seeing BlacKkKlansman, reportedly not knowing whose son he was when he made the call. Washington became the first Black actor to lead a Nolan film. Tenet pulled $365 million worldwide on a $200 million-plus budget, released in September 2020 when theaters were barely open, so the box office doesn't tell the whole story. The Piano Lesson in 2024 was more loaded: he starred alongside Samuel L. Jackson in a film his brother Malcolm directed and his father produced. The nepotism narrative looks complicated when you check the resume first.
Side Notes
The paper trail on his background is weirder than most people know. At 7, he played a student in Malcolm X, the Spike Lee film starring his father. He spent the next two decades actively separating himself from that connection: no social media, no public personal life, and reportedly didn't tell Denzel he was pursuing acting until he'd already booked Ballers. He left Morehouse with the school rushing record. He had already been famous as someone else's son for twenty years before anyone knew his name.