I’ve always loved Djimon Hounsou. He’s an actor who does a lot with his smaller roles, and the two which always stuck with me were Gladiator and In America. He was Oscar-nominated for In America and Blood Diamond (I always thought he should have won for In America). He’s currently promoting Shazam! Fury of the Gods, which appears more and more to be a “good paycheck” for a number of actors who simply needed the work. Djimon was recently interviewed by the Guardian, and he spoke at length about the lack of respect he still gets within the industry and how he’s never really gotten a big paycheck.

Moving to France at the age of 12: “It’s a different environment that taught me so much, but it also ripped me apart. I was extremely lonely. There was nobody I could connect to. You’re in a completely foreign environment, an environment that is seen to not care much for your kind.”

Moving to Paris in his teens: Acting work was hard to come by (“I felt the racism was quite heavy out there back then”). Before long, his student visa had expired. “Not only am I homeless, but I’m also illegal. It was almost impossible to live and to find a job in France at the time. So that’s how I ended up on the streets.”

A chance encounter led him to model for Thierry Mugler. “He immediately saw me and was like: ‘This is who we’re looking for. This is the man.’” It was an alien, stressful environment. Mugler’s assistant took pictures of Hounsou in different outfits, including some leather underwear. Did he feel uncomfortable? “Oh, for sure, I was very uncomfortable and not sure if this was a disservice to my manhood. But at the same time, certainly, Thierry Mugler could feel I was very timid about this setting and was a gentleman who put me at ease.”

Moving to LA: “I certainly didn’t feel like I belonged in that [fashion] world,” he says. So, at 22, he moved to Los Angeles, despite his limited English. “All I knew how to say was: yes, hello, good morning, thank you, yes sir,” he says. A visiting friend mocked his Hollywood ambitions. “‘Acting? But you realise you don’t speak the language?’ For somebody else to point it out was like a slap in my face. I was so hurt; from that point on, I refused to tell anybody my dreams.”

Not being Oscar-nominated for Amistad. “Yeah. Maybe I was early. If my movies had come out today I definitely would have gotten an Oscar already.”

His supporting-actor nomination for Blood Diamond in 2006: “I felt seriously cheated. Today, we talk so much about the Oscars being so white, but I remember there was a time where I had no support at all: no support from my own people, no support from the media, from the industry itself. It felt like: ‘You should be happy that you’ve got nominated,’ and that’s that.”

Whether he still finds the industry limiting: “I’m still struggling to try to make a dollar! I’ve come up in the business with some people who are absolutely well off and have very little of my accolades. So I feel cheated, tremendously cheated, in terms of finances and in terms of the workload as well. I’ve gone to studios for meetings and they’re like: ‘Wow, we felt like you just got off the boat and then went back [after Amistad]. We didn’t know you were here as a true actor.’ When you hear things like that, you can see that some people’s vision of you, or what you represent, is very limiting. But it is what it is. It’s up to me to redeem that.”

He still has to take smaller roles: He does it to assert himself as a “man of today” and “to prove that I can speak the language. I may not speak perfectly like an American with an American accent, but I don’t need to be all-American… I still have to prove why I need to get paid. They always come at me with a complete low ball: ‘We only have this much for the role, but we love you so much and we really think you can bring so much.’ Viola Davis said it beautifully: she’s won an Oscar, she’s won an Emmy, she’s won a Tony and she still can’t get paid. [She added a Grammy in February.] Film after film, it’s a struggle. I have yet to meet the film that paid me fairly.”

[From The Guardian]

This is so painful, and it reminds me of Ke Huy Quan’s story too, the sudden shooting stardom and then a whole lot of silence, a lot of blank looks on auditions, not a lot of respect for what these immigrant actors who have already shown what they can do. Seriously, go back and watch In America – it’s a shame he didn’t win for that film, and it really was a brilliant showcase for his talent. It’s about race too and what kinds of immigrants are given work in Hollywood. Anyway, I came out of this interview so depressed. He’s so talented and I hope this interview wakes up some directors to cast him! He also hopes he can return for the second Gladiator movie and I hope he gets that.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.