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To be sure, whether he relishes the image or not ("I'm not in the loop; I don't know any actors, really, just the ones I work with," he says coyly), Washington is a hot Hollywood property, and he gets first look at the best scripts in town. "I've been fortunate. I don't pick scripts. Scripts pick me," he says. "It's like it's obvious; you read it and go, 'Oh, man, thanks for sending this to me.' It's easy to pick a Training Day or John Q. It's not hard, 'cause you read 10 or 15 of them and can't get past page 14. Then you pick up one, and it's like, Oh this is over already? Wow, this is a good one."

John Q was directed by Nick Cassavetes, whose own daughter has a congenital heart disease. "I know about the runarounds you get from insurance companies, hospitals and doctors," Cassavetes says. The film tells the story of John Q Archibald (Washington), a factory worker whose nine-year-old son collapses during a baseball game and falls gravely ill, in need of a lifesaving heart transplant. John Q challenges the health-care system by taking a hospital emergency room hostage when the operation is denied because the family has no insurance. Also among the cast are Robert Duvall as a hostage negotiator; James Woods as a heart surgeon; Anne Heche as a hospital administrator; Kimberly Elise as John's wife; Daniel E. Smith as John's young son; and Ray Liotta as the police chief.

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