FORGET his Oscar, and put aside his box office power. Denzel Washington has one quality that puts him head and shoulders above other Hollywood actors. "He's got a movie star smile,'' says producer Jerry Bruckheimer. Washington stars in the crime thriller Deja Vu which debuts in US movie theatres today hoping to be among the top box office draws over this week's US Thanksgiving Day holiday.

In Deja Vu the star of films ranging from Malcolm X to Training Day for which he won 2001's best actor Oscar, plays a federal cop who travels in time to stop a terror attack.

Washington said the film's premise fascinated him with its use of technology and made him think about high-tech spying in current times.

"It has all of this cutting-edge technology and a lot of it is true with how far we've gone with surveillance. I mean, if we can Google anybody's house on Earth, ain't no telling what the government can do,'' Washington said with a flash of his smile.

Washington portrays Doug Carlin, an agent with the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives who is sent to investigate the bombing of a New Orleans' ferry.

Once there, he is teamed with a secret government group that uses high-tech surveillance equipment to, in effect, recreate past events and give cops the ability to find criminals before they actually commit a crime.

While viewing the surveillance, Carlin also spies a woman with whom he almost immediately falls in love, and when he uses the machine to travel back in time, audiences learn exactly who she is and why he is smitten with her.

"It's weird. It's a love story told backwards,'' Washington said.

The part of Doug Carlin is not the most challenging dramatic role in which Washington's fans have ever seen the actor or, for that matter, are likely to see him in the future.

But over the years, Washington has remained a Hollywood star precisely because he has taken diverse roles in a wide range of movies. Movies like Cry Freedom, Philadelphia and John Q have tackled subjects such as South African apartheid, Aids and the US health-care system, respectively.

In fact Deja Vu is more complex — and subtle — than its plot summary may suggest.

Director Tony Scott and star Washington have brought texture and cinematic power to the visually exquisite film.

This third teaming of Scott and Washington — they previously worked together on Crimson Tide and Man on Fire — is the least overtly dramatic but the most resonant of their collaborations with the duo giving solidity to a concept that would fly apart in less sure hands.

Scott understands filmmaking as well as any Hollywood director and easily connects with Washington's subtle and low-key acting style. This marriage of talents results in extremely rewarding ends.

Recently at a Los Angeles press conference to promote Déj|0xe0| Vu, Washington answered questions from reporters about the film and his own approach to the film projects he chooses:

Q: Ever had déj|0xe0| vu?

DW: You know what? I had one today. I'm going to get the mail out of the mailbox, and I'm walking around and I'm out on the street by my front gate, and I've got a feeling somebody's going to drive by, so I just stood out there, and a white truck comes by and it stops, and it backs up, and it's Eddie Murphy. And I just had a feeling somebody was — I'll just stand here another second. And it wasn't ten seconds he drove by and gave me the whole scoop on (his new film) Dreamgirls. He said the girl is stealing the movie. What's her name?

A journalist shouts out "Jennifer Hudson."

DW: Okay. (laughs) That's her name. Does she? Have you seen it? Has anybody seen it yet? So she's good. Murphy said she stops the movie and the applause (at a preview screening) was apparently amazing.

Q: You've been in a lot of high drama, also a lot of kick-ass action movies. Is this the same sort of approach for you, or is this more fun?

DW: The approach is the same. I mean you research — the approach is the same in that you try to develop a character and interpret the screenplay. Um, what did you say?

Q: More fun than say a Training Day?

DW: Well, it depends. I mean, you gotta do that sometimes for like The Hurricane. That was not an action picture but I had to obviously be in shape. So it depends upon the part. Sometimes, you don't want to do that. In the case of Inside Man, I liked the fact that he was a little beat up and he's got this younger girl and is trying to hang on to her and he's a little overweight and things aren't — you know, it's a cheap excuse not to work out.

Q: What about working with Tony Scott and also his brother (director Ridley Scott)?

DW: Yeah. Third time with Tony, third time with Jerry (Bruckheimer) as well. Needless to say, we've had tremendous success. I like working with Tony. I hope to do more movies with him, I must be the first person in the business to work with Tony Scott and Ridley Scott in the same year (Ridley Scott is directing Washington's upcoming thriller American Gangster). Obviously Tony and Jerry know what they're doing. When they call me and say, "Hey we've got this idea and this is what we want to do," then I listen.

Q: Jerry told us about something in New Orleans before Katrina and then Katrina hit — and you insisted not going to Seattle but staying in New Orleans because you wanted to help the victims. Can you talk about that?

DW: I don't know if that's completely true. I insisted? Maybe I did. I had another film lined up?. . . I insisted, I waited, I had another film — what else did I say? I wanted to help the victims . . . Okay. Number One, I didn't insist. It was Tony Scott's decision. It's his movie. He wanted to make the film in New Orleans before Katrina. Post Katrina, he looked at other locations that he didn't feel comfortable about. He felt that New Orleans was the place, and I may have said, if that's what you feel, let's do what you want. But I insisted? It's really the filmmaker's decision, not the actor's.

Q: I think he wanted to say you felt passionate about staying in the original location.

DW: I didn't think there was any reason. I think if that's what the filmmaker wants, that we should go for it. There's no reason to shy away from it. And yes, it's a good thing to spend money there and put people to work there — but I think fundamentally it was an artistic decision by the filmmaker. This is what he saw and this is what he wanted.

Q: Were you changed by the experience? Just being surrounded by all that?

DW: You have to be more specific. I mean every day of your life changes you. I went all around the city. I'm glad to have been a part of helping to get the film community back in there. There's tremendous devastation, there was a lot of listening to people's stories of what they'd been through. There's a long way to go there, and I was glad to be a part in some way of helping to spend a little money down there and putting people to work.

Q: This movie deals with time travel and it's 30 years since Wilma, your first credited role. Is there a particular aspect of your career that looking back—?

DW: I don't look back. No.

Q: You don't value it?

DW: I didn't say that. I just don't look back. I just don't. For what? To reminisce? Maybe when I'm older . . . People say, 'What's your favourite film?' I say, "My next one". I'm not interested in sitting around. I just don't. Just never have. There's never been that kind of —

Q: This film spotlights a post 9/11 world with the terrorist attack on the boat. It was in the L.A. Times this weekend that to finish American Gangster, you're going to Thailand to film where they had a military coup recently. People making films there left the country—Nicholas Cage among them, in a private plane. Do you worry about personal security being an American movie star?

DW: No. I don't worry about it.

Q: I was just wondering, the whole space-time concept is mind-blowing. Could you finally wrap your head around it?

DW: Tony and (producer) Jerry Bruckheimer had to somewhat convince me that this could work. And the original screenplay — I was like — hmm, I don't know fellas. Tony was saying — look, we want to steep this in facts about surveillance and what it's capable of and pushing that envelope and a lot of what we're doing and what you see, they are capable of, I don't know about the multi-angles and all of that, but we do have the technology , as you all know we Google Earth, you look at somebody's house. We do have the technology to look through somebody's house. They use it in Baghdad as we speak, or in Iraq, where you see a "heat signature". Where it's going now, or has already gone, is that by gathering your genetic information, DNA and all that type of information, they can identify you as opposed to me, so can look at your house from 18 miles above, see your signature, know what your makeup is, know that that's you in the bathroom doing whatever. You know what I mean? So in the bombings in London it wasn't just video surveillance. It was more than just video surveillance. They got the job done. So it does raise a question how far we're willing to go, or is it already too late? Who knows?

Q: What do you mean more than video surveillance?

DW: Just what I said.

Q: What does People magazine's sexiest man alive have to do to train to be an ATF agent for a movie?

DW: Sexy training. That could be like a gym, you could start sexy gyms or something like that, right? You cannot eat in New Orleans, that's one thing, ah man, there's no such thing as health food; they do have a good Whole Foods there though. But I remember going to one place and I said, "Can you make me a clean piece of fish," and he said, "Oh, we're going to wash the fish for you". As they say, just live better, just live better. You know, just watching what you eat and going to the gym.

Q: Did you spend much time studying how to play an ATF agent.

DW: Again, Tony like myself likes research. He always tracks down real guys who do — you know, we did it with Man on Fire, we did it with Crimson Tide and we did it with Déj|0xe0| Vu, and Jerry was an ATF guy who was instrumental in figuring out the Oklahoma City bombing, we used his methods and applied it directly to this film. They found small pieces of plastic in the destruction of the Federal building, they identified it, tracked it, found out it came from barrels, found out where they were made, found out where they were purchased and worked their way back, they already had McVeigh at that time, but they were able to connect him to those things. We took that directly and applied it to our story. He, when he would get very tired working twenty, thirty, hours at a time, he said, "If you brush your teeth it's like getting an hour's sleep." I put that in the movie, I brushed my teeth in the scene, so I like as Tony likes, finding real people.

Q: You've played Steve Biko, Malcolm X and other real characters on screen. There's a rising feeling about a movie about the late, great Marvin Gaye. Can you see yourself involved with that?

DW: It's been around a long time, they talked to me about it for a long time, (he laughs) I'm too old now I think. I just don't see it. I'd like to see it made, I don't know if I want to do it, that's a tricky one, you know, Marvin is special to a lot of people and I wouldn't — no.

Q: Could you play his father?

DW: Yeah, I'll be the sexy father, that's it, I'll be the sexy father. No, I mean, but I don't know, it's been around, I don't know what's happening to be honest with you.

Q: Are you a strongly serious person?

DW: There's a clown in there, there's a clown in me that's waiting to get out. Do I feel what? Do I feel as serious as that character do you mean?

Q: Back to New Orleans, is it true that you made a donation to the university and went and spoke there while you were filming?

DW: Yes.

Q: And did you see Spike Lee's New Orleans documentary When the Levees Broke?

DW: Yes, great, great film, great film, great job.

Q: Are you directing any time soon?

DW: In March, yeah, a film called The Debaters about a school in 1935 Wiley College that had 400 students, and they beat everybody in the country in debating, they were just a great little school in a nowhere little town in Texas, they had a teacher and a good debating coach by the name of Mel Tolson, who's considered one of the great African American poets of our time. They had a young 14 year-old freshman on the team by the name of James Farmer who went on to start the Congress on Racial Equality and was instrumental in the civil rights movement, as instrumental as anyone else. It's an interesting story about a 14 year-old who falls in love with a 20 year old girl who doesn't fall in love with him, and about a little team that goes up against the big giant in the country and wins.