Denzel Washington, Man on Fire
The New York Times
The actor never leans in — he’s all in. And in his latest, “Macbeth,” conjured by Joel Coen, he is as sharp and deadly as a dagger.
When Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand began rehearsing to play the Macbeths, he asked her how she thought the couple had met.
Oh, she replied blithely, the Macbeths met when they were 15. They were Romeo and Juliet, but they didn’t commit suicide. They just stayed married for 50 years. But they didn’t have any kids and his career stalled, so thinking legacy, they suddenly went gangster and killed their nice, old friend, the king.
“This is one of the only good marriages in Shakespeare,” said Joel Coen, who adapted and directed “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” opening widely on Christmas Day. “They just happen to be plotting a murder.”
