(Photo by Getty Images/Getty Images for Hollywood Foreign Press Association)[/caption]
“Where did he come from?” is what most people said when they saw the standout John David Washington on the hit HBO series “Ballers.” Now, the talented young man has been in the critically acclaimed Spike Lee film, The BlackKKlansman and the psychological thriller, Tenet.
But some people still don’t know that he has legendary greatness in his genes.
The 42-year-old actor slightly resembles his father, actor Denzel Washington, with an updated contemporary swagger. According to twitter, this is a fact that apparently many fans of the show just learned. Apparently, many people are just learning John David has a famous father and mother.
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It turns out that not only is John David Washington the son of Denzel, but he was a baller in real life as well. The Morehouse graduate was also a football standout with legendary talent, and even had a cup of coffee in the NFL, playing for the St. Louis Rams in the 2006 season.
(Photo credit: facebook)
Being the son of a famous father wasn’t always great, John David said. Once opposing players found out he was Denzel’s son, they used that as fuel to talk trash against him.
“Usually it’s ‘yo mama this, or yo mama that. But on the field it was your Daddy’s this and that. They tried to use my father’s name against me. Football players are creative when they’re in the moment.”
But he didn’t let that stop him.
After his brief stint in the NFL, he went on to play in the European Football League for Germany’s Hamburg Sea Devils followed by four years for the California Redwoods in the United Football League until it folded in 2012, according to pajiba.com.
And that, no doubt, is how he built his fabulous body, which makes him perfect for the HBO show that just finished airing it’s first season with great reviews.
From running to weightlifting, the young star grew his body into football shape over the years and still keeps it tight now for the show and just overall health.
One of his rules to live by: “What you put in your body, you get out.”
But, John David had to have a major medical surgery for a ruptured Achilles tendon in July 2013, which ended his football career, and an undisclosed emergency surgery at The Brooklyn Hospital Center around 2018 prior to a press tour.
Achilles Tendon Surgery
Apart from keeping his body lean and mean and having the handsome genes from his dad, John David says he has trouble with the ladies.
Here’s what he has to say to Steve Harvey:
According to Esquire.com, Washington has been analyzing—really studying—filmmaking since he was a kid. Perched with his mom in the video village, where key crew members sit on a movie set, he saw characters come to life on the small monitors, little snippets of the stories being created just feet away. When he was on set for Malcolm X, Spike Lee asked his parents if their six-year-old son could be part of the final scene, a flash-forward to decades after the civil-rights activist’s death, in which schoolchildren shout, “I am Malcolm X.” (“I didn’t have to be an Einstein to grab [Denzel’s] kid and put him in the movie,” Lee tells me. “That’s a good film to have as a first film on your résumé.”)
Washington went by JD in school—except to his three younger siblings. “He never let us call him that when we were kids, only his friends . . . . We weren’t cool enough, lol,” his younger sister Olivia says in an email. If you ask those who knew him best then, they’ll tell you JD was a sports fanatic. They’ll say they barely remember him mentioning acting at all.
At the age of 9, Washington played a student in a Harlem classroom in the classic 1992 Spike Lee joint starring his father, as Malcolm X. In 2010, he worked with his father again, co-producing the post-apocalyptic thriller Book of Eli.
Here’s a clip of the young star in action on HBO’s “Ballers”
We look forward to seeing more from this young talent. Who knows there may be even a father and son collaboration in the works (fingers crossed).
(Photo credit: Instagram)
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