Washington says school saved him from crime

Denzel Washington says his mother stopped him becoming a 'victim of the streets'.

He says she saved him from street crime by sending him to private school in New York when he was 14.

He claims his childhood friends have served 40 years combined in jail since then.

Washington told Hello!: "When I was 14, my mother sent me away to private school in upstate New York, and that decision changed my life, because I wouldn't have survived in the direction I was going.

"I was upset by my parents' divorce and doing poorly at school. I was going through a very rebellious stage.

"The guys I was hanging around with as a youth, my running buddies, have now maybe 40 years combined in the penitentiary. They were nice guys, but the streets got them, just as the streets could have got me."