When Denzel Washington starred in a 'Ugandan' movie

Plot: A minor automobile accident in downtown Greenwood brings together the Indian family's daughter, Mina (Sarita Choudhury), and Demetrius (Denzel Washington), an African American who makes his living by cleaning carpets.

A scene from the movie Pulse

Nair, who is married to Ugandan professor Mahmood Mamdani, had her first film “Salaam Bombay!” nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film at the 61st Academy Awards.

Mississippi Masala, meanwhile, was largely responsible for making Denzel Washington a global heartthrob and superstar.

Interracial love Pulse

The director recently recalled this movie and working with Denzel.

“My husband of now 32 years, he’s in the other room right now. Mahmood Mamdani, a Ugandan professor and activist…” she began.

“When we started with the non-love stuff in the movie, Denzel was just consummate, I mean, man, he’s just in his being. He would enter the restaurant in the scene and he would just be so deeply natural and completely charismatic at the same time. It was just so real. But when it came to the love stuff, I was not feeling it.

I also should tell you that I was warned by a good friend, Spike Lee, he used to tease me and say, “Denzel is not going to take his shirt off.” Then I would come to the set and he’s under the car, fixing the car, and he’s taken his shirt off on his own. I would just laugh internally and think, Spike, I never asked him and there he was,” she said.

Mira Nair Pulse

It was a powerfully romantic movie, and possibly one of the few movies where Denzel ever got sexually intimate.

In fact, he refused to kiss white women in movies possibly during or soon after this movie.

Washington starred in 1993's legal-thriller-slash-mystery "The Pelican Brief," with Washington as Gray Grantham, a reporter with the Washington Herald, and Julia Roberts as Darby Shaw, a law student at Tulane University.

He reportedly refused to kiss Roberts in the movie.