Denzel’s back on the old track
ACTOR Denzel Washington broke a childhood vow to himself when he agreed to make his latest flick, subway thriller The Taking Of Pelham 1 2 3.
In a remake of the 1974 classic starring Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw, the double Oscar winner plays Walter Garber, a New York Underground dispatcher whose daily grind is interrupted by reckless hijacker John Travolta.
As a youngster growing up in Mount Vernon just outside New York City, Denzel travelled that same subway every day and he promised if he ever made a name for himself he would never return to those tracks.
“I spent two hours each way [going to school] and did everything on it – slept, ate, did my homework,” the 54-year-old star recalls. “I swore as soon as I had two pennies to rub together I would never ride it again. I hadn’t travelled the subway for 20 years. It smelled just the way I remembered.” Lovely.