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
I wanna begin saying a story about my son. I have a four-year old son who loves superheroes from Spider-Man to Iron Man to Batman. He's got all the costumes. One day he looks at me and says 'Dad, I want to be light-skinned so I could be Spider-Man. Spider-Man has light skin.' That was sort of a shock. This is why I am excited to be a part of the Marvel Universe, so I could be hopefully provide that diversity in the role of the superhero.
The gym can serve as an excellent place where kids and young men and women can really empty their issues right on the floor.
The first time you see the film it takes you right back to those times and those moments. It's very difficult to be objective about the work because you really have to remove yourself and see it a couple of times before you can really involve yourself in the story.
I always hope for the better for the continent and what I know comes from Africa. Living in the West we feel like we're so removed from the continent that we can somewhat shut off.
I was just a very torn child, very wounded in so many areas, with no family support. I happened to the be the fifth child of my family. So everybody was already grown and had left home already.
There is a real problem with 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. It gives a certain social distance with your world.
If anything, Calvin Klein is the iconic company in terms of fashion. They do have iconic images for their campaigns.
I hope more people will ask diamond companies to continue changing the way they do business in Africa.
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.
Funny enough, every role that I have had, I try to tone down my accent or speak with better diction.
School bored me. Being educated and being intelligent are two different things. I thought I was smart enough. And I wanted to be an entertainer. I stopped going to school as a way of saying I was mature, a way of saying I was going to choose who I was going to become.
America has this understanding of Africans that plays like National Geographic: a bunch of Negroes with loincloths running around the plain fields of Africa chasing gazelles.
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.