When Denzel Washington committed to star in Training Day, it must have been a heady moment for the actor. But that's not because the film itself was a risk or that he was worried about his ability to play his role. Instead, this 2011 crime thriller marked Washington's first time playing a bad guy—a fact that made his Training Day casting surprisingly controversial. After becoming a megastar, winning an Oscar and earning the respect of audiences and his peers, Denzel suddenly found himself faced with a momentous task: to prove his naysayers wrong by effectively portraying a villain on screen after two decades of playing the good guy.

Fortunately, the ever-capable star has proven he's more than up to the task. His performance as corrupt LAPD detective Alonzo Harris is one of the greatest performances of his career and earned Washington a second Academy Award as a result. That in itself would be impressive, but when you consider what went into the making of Training Day, it becomes even more incredible.

Instead of shooting on sound stages, director Antoine Fuqua decided to shoot "Training Day" on location in Los Angeles. This is a film that takes extensive detours into some of the city's less desirable neighborhoods, which meant that Fuqua and co. they essentially shot in the gang's territory for most of the film. While you might think this added to Washington's already major concerns, the veteran star seems to have kept a clear head. In fact, he never once worried about his safety while filming Training Day. His previous film, however, was the first and only time Denzel was actually scared while shooting a movie.

By all accounts, Denzel Washington had the balls to shoot "Training Day," which was off script and improvising his way through one of his best performances ever. At no point do you get the sense that he was intimidated by the project, his first time playing a villain, or working with real gang members in real gang neighborhoods. The actor once told Morning call also on the question of the potentially dangerous filming conditions of "Training Day". Not only did Washington state that he "never felt a sense of danger," he actually recalled how welcome he felt at the Imperial Yards housing project in Los Angeles, saying:

"I met a number of (gang members) and they all said, 'Oh, you've got to meet my mother.' And the mothers would come and hug me and say, "Denzel, we need to make you something to eat right now." I went to one of their houses and someone said to me later, "That was the boy's mother, now you are there."

So if shooting at a location notorious for gang activity didn't fatalize Denzel, then what did? Well, his previous film The Hurricane managed to upset the actor a bit. In the 1999 biopic, Denzel played real-life boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, who was wrongly convicted of murder in 1966 before being sent to prison for 20 years. It is one of Denzel Washington's most watched moviesand it also happens to be the one time the actor felt a real sense of danger on set.

While The Hurricane is ostensibly a sports drama based on Rubin Carter's real life, most of the film takes place in a prison, where Denzel Washington's Carter spends his time trying to prove his innocence while an enterprising young Brooklyn woman named Lesra Martin (Witchelow Reon Shannon) undertakes to exonerate a wrongfully convicted boxer.

Much like Antoine Fuqua with "Training Day," "Hurricane" director Norman Jewison decided his film would benefit from being shot on location. That meant Denzel was housed at East Jersey State Prison (formerly "Rahway State Prison")—the same facility that housed Carter himself 15 years earlier. While the maximum security prison no doubt gave the film authenticity, it also managed to strike fear into a typically reclusive Washington. The actor told the Morning Call that while "Training Day" was a comparative breeze, "When we were shooting 'Hurricane' at the (East Jersey) State Prison (in Rahway), and they locked the doors behind me, that's when I experienced a sense of danger."

However, this sense of danger doesn't seem to have deterred the actor, who had the right example of Rubin Carter to guide him. As Washington once said to Tampa Bay Times"This is a tough, tough guy. Some of the prison guards were talking about it when we were filming at Rahway (State Penitentiary). Those older guys told us they never broke (Rubin). They said that everyone is broken in this penitentiary. but not him.'