Denzel Washington's Wife Pauletta Was Praying That Her Kids Didn’t Want to Be Actors
Denzel Washington’s wife, Pauletta Washington, opened up about what she really thought about her children acting.
Celebrity
A look at how Denzel Washington and Pauletta Washington both influenced their kids’ successful acting careers.
by Antonio Stallings
Published on January 13, 2025
Denzel Washington wasn’t the only actor in his household to go Hollywood. All of his children are involved in the entertainment industry in some capacity. However, Washington’s wife, Pauletta, wasn’t really on board with their children becoming actors at first.
Denzel Washington and Pauletta Washington | Kevin Mazur/Getty ImagesPauletta wasn’t all that thrilled with her children following their parents’ footsteps. Like Denzel, Pauletta is also a successful actor in her own right. According to an interview Denzel did with Live with Kelly and Mark, he first met his wife while they were doing a project together. Given how intertwined acting is with their lives, it makes sense why Pauletta and Denzel’s kids would choose a similar path. However, if it was up to their mother, John David and his siblings would’ve chosen another profession.
“I was praying and hoping that none of them wanted to be actors. I think it’s in their blood,” Pauletta once told The Root.
Since Pauletta couldn’t seem to change their minds, she allowed her kids to follow their acting dreams under one condition.
“The only requirement was they had to go to college,” she said.
Their kids even pursued a variety of college majors that supported a non-acting future. However, over time, the Washington children found their way back to acting one way or another.
“My oldest daughter, Katia, graduated from Yale with a history major. My oldest son, John David, went to Morehouse. My baby girl, Olivia, went to NYU for acting. My baby boy, Malcolm, went to UPenn and started out finance but ended up in theater because he loved the history of theater and film. Now he just graduated from AFI as a director, and he’s working with Spike Lee on Netflix’s She’s Gotta Have It,” she said.
Denzel seemed just as supportive and proud of his kids becoming actors as Pauletta. He helped encourage his kids’ aspirations at a young age. One of his kids, John David, told his father at a young age that he wasn’t sure he wanted to be an actor — if only because he believed Denzel’s starpower would overshadow him. John David wanted people to know him for more than just the kid of a celebrity.
“I remember he said to me years ago, ‘Dad your shadow is so big and I don’t know if I can.’ I said, ‘My shadow is big? You’ve ever heard of Kirk Douglas?’ He’s like, ‘No.’ I said, ‘You’ve heard of Michael Douglas right?’ He said, ‘Yeah, Michael of course.’ I said, ‘Google Michael Douglas and then come back and talk to me about my shadow,’” Washington once said during a Q&A & according to The Hollywood Reporter.
That advice helped inspire confidence in John David and his siblings. However, Denzel would also offer his kids words of wisdom about honing their craft. Speaking from experience, The Training Day star asserted that it wasn’t enough to do television shows and movies to be good actors.
“I told them they have to get on the stage because that’s where you learn to act,” Denzel said in an interview with Sunday Times. “You don’t learn to act on TV; you don’t learn to act in movies. You learn to act on stage. TV and films are a director’s medium where they are in control.”
John David eventually took his father’s advice when he starred in the 2022 Broadway stage adaptation of The Piano Lesson. Although, before he hit the stage, he already had a successful filmography. He had his career breakthrough when he went from playing in the NFL to doing the NFL series Ballers.
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