Djimon Hounsou
Djimon Hounsou
Djimon Gaston Hounsou is a Beninese-American model and actor. Hounsou began his career appearing in music videos. He made his film debut in the Sandra Bernhard film Without You I'm Nothingand gained widespread recognition for his role as Cinqué in the Steven Spielberg film Amistad. He gained further recognition for his roles in Gladiator, In America, Blood Diamond, Guardians of the Galaxyand Furious 7. He has been nominated for a Golden Globe Award, three Screen Actors Guild Awards and two...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth24 April 1964
CountryUnited States of America
Rehearsals are set up so that you find out all the nuances about your character. You never want to beat yourself up. It's about finding the right direction, and most of the time, the right direction is not what you think is the right direction. That's why the director's there: to guide you there.
Until you are somewhat comfortable and confident and embrace who you are as a person, you can't possibly love somebody else because you don't like yourself that much.
The lack of diversity, specifically in genre films and the superheroes our kids grow up watching and emulating, they can't really identify with. When you see the same thing, over and over again, and it seems not to speak of you and your heritage and your culture, it leaves you out of this world a little bit.
When most people in the West think about Africa, is their first thought about the game reserves and who's chasing gazelles, or are they looking at Africans as people who are equally equipped to do great things, as in the West?
Even while modeling, I was still practicing kung fu and boxing as sports.
Some of the reason why you have so many divorces is that we tend to get married, most of the time, not for ourselves, but for others, or for how it looks to others.
Africa is a continent that provides so much for the existence of the rest of the world. We go around the world and cultivate so many things.
I happened to the be the fifth child of my family, so everybody was already grown and had left home already.
It's a part of most actors to want to be in an animated feature; to extend the legacy of your career.
My passion is more about bringing the stories out from the African continent mixed with the West.
A lot of times, we also have to live and work. You have to make money to pay rent. In that respect, I don't think you can be so demanding. Those great stories are not the normal stories that come on a daily basis. It's a struggle to land those roles. Everybody is looking for the good parts.
As a young boy, I had strange dreams of affecting people and somehow being instrumental in changing the makeup of Africa and helping to improve life there.
I like stories that have a social impact and social attributes to them. That's the whole reason we make films: to broaden our limited view of things and to see how life is evolving elsewhere.
One of the things I find extremely challenging about the continent of Africa is that when the immediate needs and the social needs of people are not met, that kills dreams, and it's all about survival.