John David Washington

John David Washington is an American actor and former professional football player born on July 28, 1984, in Toluca Lake, Los Angeles, California. He is the oldest of four children born to actor Denzel Washington and actress and singer Pauletta Washington. Washington is known for his work across television, film, and theater.

Washington grew up in Los Angeles and attended Campbell Hall School, where he lettered in football, basketball, and track before graduating in 2002. At age seven, he made an early film appearance playing a student in the 1992 feature Malcolm X, which starred his father in the title role. He later attended Morehouse College, where he played college football and graduated in 2006.

During his collegiate football career at Morehouse, Washington set school records, leading the conference with 1,198 rushing yards as a senior and holding the school's single-game and career rushing records from 2005 to 2011. After going undrafted in the 2006 NFL draft, he was signed by the St. Louis Rams as an undrafted free agent and spent time on their practice squad. He also played in NFL Europe for the Rhein Fire in 2007. In 2009, he was drafted by the California Redwoods (later the Sacramento Mountain Lions) of the United Football League, playing as a running back until the league folded in October 2012.

Following his football career, Washington shifted to acting full-time. In 2015, he earned a main cast role as NFL player Ricky Jerret on the HBO comedy series Ballers, a show that ran for five seasons through 2019.

Washington achieved a career breakthrough playing detective Ron Stallworth in Spike Lee's crime drama BlacKkKlansman (2018). The film premiered at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, winning the Grand Prix, and became a commercial success. For his performance, Washington earned nominations for a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. That same year, he appeared in the western film The Old Man & the Gun, as well as the drama films Monsters and Men and Monster.

Director Christopher Nolan subsequently cast Washington as the lead in the science fiction thriller Tenet (2020), a role for which Washington won the Saturn Award for Best Actor. He went on to star alongside Zendaya in the drama Malcolm & Marie (2021), played lawyer Harold Woodman in the period film Amsterdam (2022), and starred in Gareth Edwards' science fiction film The Creator (2023).

In theater, Washington made his Broadway debut in a revival of August Wilson's play The Piano Lesson from September 2022 to January 2023, later reprising his role in a 2024 film adaptation directed by his brother, Malcolm Washington. His recent and upcoming projects include becoming the face of Tom Ford's Bois Pacifique fragrance in 2025, starring in the off-Broadway play Disruption in late 2026, and being cast in Nikyatu Jusu's horror film Mime.