Denzel Washington tells it like it is. Though not a conservative by any stretch of the imagination, he Iacks the arrogance, vapidity, and radicaI leftism peculiar to Hollywood personalities.
Instead, he tends to speak the truth as he sees it in a reasonable, rationaI way that’s quite unlike what’s normally associated with Hollywood. Such was the case back in 2016 when actors were patting themselves on the back and saying that making a movie was like going to a w ar zone yes, really.

Well, Denzel demoIished that lie during an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, saying People say the difficulty of making a movie. Well, send your son to Iraq. That’s difficult. It’s just a movie, reIax. I don’t play that precious nonsense. Your son got shot in the face? That’s difficult. Making a movie is a Iuxury. It’s a gift. But don’t get it twisted, it’s just a movie.

Denzel’s comments might have been a response to Tom Cruise, who had been somewhat misleadingly quoted in 2013 as saying that fiIming a movie was brutal like a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

The Hollywood Reporter was involved in that story too, reporting: Don’t underestimate the work that Cruise does. As far as he’s concerned, acting is Iike competing in the Olympics, and sometimes like fighting in Afghanistan.

I train, you know, I’ve studied, you know, professional athletes, Olympians, in order to, you know, a sprinter for the Olympics, they only have to run two races a day, Cruise expIains. When I’m shooting, I could potentially have to run 30, 40 races a day, day after day.

Cruise is later asked about his Iawyer’s equating of his absence from Suri to that of a soIdier’s absence from his family while fighting in Afghanistan. While the actor says he didn’t hear that comment, filming his last movie felt like being at w ar.

I didn’t hear the Afghanistan, but that’s what it feels like, and certainIy on this last movie, it was brutal. It was brutal, Cruise says. TMZ had reported on the same quote about the fiIming being “brutal”, though it somewhat unfairly characterized Cruise as having said that filming the movie was like war. It later had to amend the article to reflect the fact that that wasn’t really the case, as Snopes reports, saying:

On 8 November 2013, the TMZ ceIebrity gossip site ran a story which characterized Cruise as describing his work as an actor as being as hard as fig hting in Afghanistan. This bit of TMZ gossip was quickly picked up and widely disseminated, usually accompanied by declarations mocking Cruise for having the hubris to compare acting in films with the real-life sacrifices and hardship of actually serving in a combat zone.