Denzel Washington or Daniel Day-Lewis?

I don't think it's a good comparison tbh - but I'm bored too - we did this poll with Pacino included and these two and Washington was a distant third and that was right.....but there's some caveats to that of course - I do still like him a whole lot.

But honestly he only has a handful of genuinely great film performances and even his great performances in quality and amount are less than DDL's (even if the amount is close because DDL did so little work) and may be even less than his own countrymen like Bridges, Hanks, Penn, or even Dafoe all in his general age range/country etc. I'd like to see DW compared to those guys first actually because I'm not sure he wins even that ...........and DDL's competitors are Oldman and Fiennes but he a least wins in his own country at least for film.

But DW against DDL ..........that's DDL every time even with my complaints about him not doing enough work (at all). DW's logic for being able to be compared to DDL is based on "success" which is great .........but that isn't "talent" and that raises him a bit too high by just having the comparison to begin with imo. 

Good Lord, DDL and it’s not especially close.

I think Day-Lewis is legitimately terrible in The Crucible - I was shading him. 

@tyler What did you dislike about that performance? 😁

"As Ethan Hawke once said, Washington is the most gifted American actor since Brando"

Stop it......just please stop it ok - we all know your a Zel-stan, and that's fine, but please don't fudge what you are saying because people read it and take it as fact - though why anyone would take anything Ethan Hawke said as fact is beyond me, but nevertheless they do - you're better than that.

He said this, below, which is not what you said above at all - he rather compares him to Brando and talks about his long years of successes he does not say he's a more gifted actor than any of several others post-Brando actually.


He’s one of our finest actors and a genuine, bona fide, card-carrying movie star, you know? He’s a better actor than, maybe when you think about other generations, like, Clark Gable or one of these people. He’s on par with Marlon Brando, but he’s sustained it for 30 years.

Close enough. Don't give yourself a hernia (DDL will win this poll here anyway. Just not in the real world ).

And why wouldn't I take what Hawke says seriously? I don't agree with everything he says, but he's clearly an incrediblely bright and perceptive man who puts a lot of thought into what he says. And he's a fine actor. I don't subscribe to your pet theory that actors don't know shit about acting or are all lying bad critics or whatever. When Hawke says something about acting, I generally pay attention.

It's the 2nd time I've corrected you for posting false info in the last month - you're the only one who does it on here afaik - the other was on Nicole Kidman (people can look using the search function) and you can take Ethan Hawke as seriously as you like but you don't have to falsely ascribe a quote to him when it is not "close enough" at all, it's merely untrue and unnecessary to your post.

Carry on....

Again ? Damn, too tired to go deep but I will simply say that I have been into cinema/acting (studying, practicing, watching, writting...) for more than 25 years and there is only one thing I'm sure about concerning all of this and that's that Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. is the single greatest actor I have ever seen, bar none. Don't ask me about best film, actress, director....I have no clue.

I love DDL and I probably shouldn't love him as much as I do because he somewhat represents things that I tend find overrated (can be too technical, relying on superficial elements makeup, accents, lacks of roles which also means less exposition to weakness, too many periods films, not enough modern characters I can relate to...) so no matter how great he is, he's also probably one of the most overated actors alive (and it's a bit unfair to compare hom to others) and yeah, I love him.

If he was in Denzel's feet and had his exact same career (50+ films, mediocre material to deal with and not many great directors behind the camera) people would realize that he's not THAT (and by THAT I mean god-like) great. Denzel's achievement as an actor is mindblowing and that's the result of a pure, immense, peerless talent. If anything, with all these great directors and scripts served of a plate it's actors like DDL, Dicaprio who are much more willing to achieve success with less talents needed.

After all the years of discussion and debate, here's what I've settled on: it all depends on what you value in an actor. If you appreciate an actor's selectivity and total immersion into a role to the point that it's hard to chart any sort of through-line from performance to performance, you'll probably favor Day-Lewis. If you appreciate a strong career of brand recognition, nose-to-the-grindstone consistency, great box-office appeal and a general habit of elevating even the weakest projects by virtue of his involvement, you'll probably back Washington.

Both are probably the best at what they're good at, and even though I'll personally favor DDL in any match-up, I've come to appreciate Washington a lot more in recent years.

This. 

DDL is a giant of acting, but Washington's pure talent is peerless. And early in my Denzel fandom I didn't even come to that recognition by watching all the obvious, heralded Oscar nominated stuff (Malcolm X, Training Day, Hurricane etc). You realise how talented he is watching one of his worst movies....

You watch Denzel in something like John Q, which is a shitshow of a movie with a basic screenplay and pedestrian direction.  Everything is signposted. And it has some great actors in it, who are completely lost at sea trying to inhabit characters lacking in any real dimension. Robert Duvall, Ray Liotta and James Woods all really struggle here. Some of our finest character actors (and in Duvall's case, an all-time great) and they all register as virtually cardboard cut-outs. 

Then you have Denzel, performing an act of superhuman performance, by imbuing this dumb movie and script with a performance of such truth, humanity and conviction that it almost saves the film. It at least makes it watchable, which by all rights it shouldn't be. He"s taking a  paper-thin role and giving something that in a  much better movie, might net him some  pretty trinket nominations. Everything in that movie feels fake as fuck....except Denzel. It's the mark of his genius, and why some regular people today actually look back on that film fondly and think it's good. Trust me, it's not. But Denzel can almost fool the untrained eye into thinking that movie was good.

Utterly heartbreaking scene. He's not even forcing the tears, just completely in the moment. Sucks that a performance of that calibre has to prop up a film this poorly calibrated.

Denzel

That is fascinating - Robert Stone (who?) said that - that should make us all reconsider everything. It's an AFI tribute everybody says nice things about everyone who wins one and he's pretty terrific you know? We get it, we all think so, but Kevin Spacey has a similar story at 14 - that wouldn't help him beat Daniel Day-Lewis in this poll either and he's got 2 Oscars and a Tony too. Just sayin'.

Not saying it's not nice, it certainly is, not saying he's not a very fine actor he certainly is and not saying you can't post this you certainly can but should you though?....In an actor's poll thread you've not only already voted, you've also preemptively said your actor won't win (Um, why is that again - ah because it's not "the real world"?), you also fudged a quote from Ethan Hawke that falsely made your actor look better than the actual quote, posted a clip.............and now a letter from his acting teacher at 22? What's next a newspaper clipping where he was catching fish with his bare hands at 7 while other mortal children sh it themselves?