Nearly 30 years after they shared the screen in the 1996 hit film “The Preacher’s Wife,” Denzel Washington is looking back on his relationship with the late Whitney Houston.
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In a June 15 conversation with legendary film critic Roger Ebert’s widow Chaz Ebert at the American Black Film Festival, the Academy Award-winning actor reflected on his extraordinary achievements on and off screen and the time he spent with his “The Preacher’s Wife” costar Whitney Houston before her untimely death in 2012.
Washington said beneath Houston’s iron-willed exterior was a vulnerability that made him extremely protective of her.
“I always felt like I wanted to protect her. You know? She wanted to be so tough, but she really wasn’t,” he said during the conversation, titled the Denzel Washington Retrospective.
Washington’s words echoed the sentiments he shared during an October 2012 interview with GQ Magazine, in which he acknowledged how hard Houston worked to overcome the addiction that ultimately took her life at age 48.
“Whitney was my girl, and she had done so well in recovery. And that is the toughest part about addiction. And that was a monster drug that got a hold of her, it was a mean one. You can’t go back to that one. Nobody beats that,” he said at the time.
The “Greatest Love of All” singer was found in the bathtub of a Beverly Hills Hotel room in February 2012. According to the Los Angeles County Coroner, Houston’s death was an accidental drowning with the “effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use.”
During his conversation with Ebert, Washington shared a first look at “The Piano Lesson,” a film he produced starring Samuel L. Jackson, Danielle Brooks and his son, John David Washington which comes to Netflix this fall. He also hinted about a major transition in his own career that could leave fans devastated.
“The things that are going on professionally for me behind the camera are as important to me now as in front of the camera. I think there’s less and less time I’ll be spending in front of the camera,” he said.
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