Denzel Washington Gets Surprise Honorary Palme d'Or At Cannes Ahead Of ‘Highest 2 Lowest' Premiere
The unannounced honor came after a reel of Washington's stellar career was shown in the Palais. The bombshell announcement was made by festival chief Thierry Frémaux as he addressed the crowd. 'It's a very special day,' he said. 'Denzel, because you are here, we want to make something special for you … it's a kind of way for us to tell you our adoration, what you have done in cinema. Nobody knows about that except Spike Lee, who wrote me to do that.'
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Lee presented the Honorary Palme to Washington. Putting his arm around the actor, Lee said: 'This is my brother right here. I love him, I love him. I'm glad you're here where all the people love you too.'
The reel included clips from his Oscar-winning turns in Training Day — 'King Kong ain't got nothin' on me!' — and Glory, along with such films as The Tragedy of Macbeth, Carbon Copy and his previous Spike Lee joints Mo' Better Blues (1990), Malcolm X (1992), He Got Game (1998) and Inside Man (2006).
Highest 2 Lowest is Lee's 'reinterpretation' of Arika Kurosawa's 1963 crime thriller High and Low. Washington plays David King aka 'King David,' a hugely successful music mogul whose son (Aubrey Joseph) and godson (Elijah Wright) — the son of his best friend and driver (Jeffrey Wright) — are mistaken for each other by an inept kidnapper.
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Washington has only attended the Cannes Film Festival once before for a film in the Official Selection. That was in 1993, when he hit town for Ken Branagh's Shakespeare adaptation Much Ado About Nothing.
Along with his Best Actor Oscar for 2001's Training Day and Supporting Actor Oscar for Glory (1989), Washington has amassed eight other Academy Award nominations. He was up for Best Actor for Malcolm X, The Hurricane (1999), Flight (2012), Fences (2016), Roman J. Israel, Esq. (2017) and the Coen brothers' The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021); Supporting for Cry Freedom (1987); and Best Picture as a producer of Fences.
Coincidentally, Washington's honor comes 36 years to the day after Lee's debut film, Do the Right Thing, electrified the Palais after its world premiere in Competition.
Tom Cruise, who was in Cannes last week for the premiere of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, received an honorary Palme d'Or when he was on the Croisette for Top Gun: Maverick in 2022.
Nancy Tartaglione contributed to this report.
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