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Pick a performance, and what do you know about an actor? Watch Susan Sarandon, a mother of three, play a childless character in Dead Man Walking, and you still sense her maternity. Tom Hanks is someone of limited intelligence in Forrest Gump, but the actor pulls it off, in part, because Hanks clearly doesn't lack for smarts.

Pick a performance of Washington's, and you won't know much. Go back to 1992's Malcolm X, and you'll see a charismatic, brilliant leader. Look at Glory (1989), and he's a proud slave who fights a war for a country that won't accept him. In 1993's The Pelican Brief, he's a driven reporter; in that year's Philadelphia, a homophobic attorney; in last year's Devil in a Blue Dress, a down-and-out private eye; in Crimson Tide, an intellectual submarine officer. The characters have complicated psyches, but what do they dream of at night? Invariably, Washington plays people who won't, or can't, shrug off their reserve. ''The camera is able to look deeply inside and see an inner process if somebody has one,'' says Edward Zwick, who directed both Courage and Glory, for which Washington won an Academy Award. ''Denzel has an extraordinary inner life, and the camera is more than aware of it. I think you partake of that when he's trying to show so little to reveal so much.''

The same quality that makes Washington such a brilliant actor is precisely what makes him such an opaque movie star. He curls up into his roles as tightly as a hermit crab finding temporary lodging. ''There is a moment at the end of the movie when he's going home,'' Zwick says of Washington's Courage Under Firecharacter. ''We shot it and it was fine, but I looked at the front of the house and I wanted evidence of the kids, so I took a bike and moved it onto the steps. I said, 'Let's go again,' and as he got to the steps, he tucked one bag under his arm and with the other arm he righted the bike. In that moment, he was a father cleaning up; he was a man resuming his duties in that house. That moment breaks my heart.''

That Washington is, in fact, a father, that he is one of three children of a Pentecostal minister and a beautician, that he grew up in Mount Vernon, N.Y., is about all the public knows about the actor. They won't hear much about the millions that he and his wife have given to charities and hospitals. And after a 1993 interview with Barbara Walters in which Washington alluded to his marital infidelity, the public certainly won't be privy to details about his private life.

Washington has mastered the ability to be the center of attention even while standing on the sidelines. At 2 a.m. on a Saturday during the filming of Courage Under Fire, Zwick and producers Joseph Singer and David Friendly gathered to play a game of poker. ''Denzel was pacing around the room and giving everyone this sort of advice without giving away our hands,'' remembers Singer. ''He wouldn't play, but each of us understood what he meant.''

His ability to appraise actors as well as he reads his characters can make him a popular costar. Russell Crowe, who played opposite Washington in last year's cyberspace adventure Virtuosity, is grateful to Washington for his support at Crowe's audition: ''It was this huge screen test, and the moment I opened my mouth a little piece of spit came flying out and hit him on the lip,'' Crowe remembers. ''Ninety-nine percent of actors would have freaked out, but he just stayed really cool and went on. As soon as the scene was done he screamed 'Aach!' and said, 'I love the taste of warm saliva in the morning.'''


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