“Being a character actor is nice,” muses Djimon Hounsou. “You build yourself up, show a certain range of your ability. But at the end of the day, I’m really looking to be a leading man. That’s really the goal.”
There’s a calm determination in his voice that makes his objective sound like an inevitability rather than a celebrity’s hyperbolic projection. On first impression, meeting Hounsou is much like watching him in a theater — a quiet, intensely charismatic man with a bold, magnetic smile.
Whether it’s his powerful portrayal of Joseph Cinque, the leader of a slave rebellion in Steven Spielberg’s 1997 film “Amistad,” or his role as Mateo, a dying artist who befriends an Irish immigrant family in Jim Sheridan’s “In America” — which earned him an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor in 2004 — Hounsou brings a raw intensity to his characters with an endearing charm and believability that humanizes them.
Even in his latest role as Albert Laurent, an elite agent on the hunt for Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson in Michael Bay’s futuristic action thriller “The Island,” he’s hardly your by-the-book bad guy. As he plays it, Hounsou moves from an unflinching rogue to a thoughtful, redemptive soul.
“Laurent was originally a very straight-ahead villain with no redeeming qualities,” says “Island” producer Walter F. Parkes, who also worked with the 41-year-old West African actor in “Amistad” and the best-picture Oscar-winner from 2000, “Gladiator.”
“When the idea of Djimon came up we suddenly we had a very interesting back story for the character as an African from the French security forces, and we had the opportunity for this kind of quiet honesty and a sense of moral integrity that Djimon brings to his work that would allow us the opportunity to redeem the character. It was really a piece of colorblind casting, but Djimon’s background only enriched the part.”
Limited roles for a black man with an accentHounsou, the Benin native who lived in Paris before arriving in Los Angeles in the late ’80s, realizes that such casting opportunities are rare in Hollywood, especially for a black man with an accent.
“I get a lot of things that have to do with slavery,” says Hounsou, relaxing after a spring promotional junket.
“America has this understanding of Africans that plays like National Geographic,” he says, “a bunch of Negroes with loincloths running around the plain fields of Africa chasing gazelles. Meanwhile, we have Africans and African-Americans, contemporary men, with great stories, great integrity, great heroes and nobody wants to see or hear about those African heroes and those African-American heroes. One day, I will be in a position to play those great human beings on-screen.”
Toward that end, the ex-model believes his Oscar nomination is pushing things along.
“It definitely has had a huge impact,” Hounsou says, “and the fact that I was nominated for something where I was speaking a little bit of English, and not entirely speaking a foreign language like in ‘Amistad.’ In that respect it maybe allowed people to look at me in a different light.”
Says Parkes: “You only have to go back as far as the current governor of California to realize that anything is possible in terms of someone from another background and nationality achieving tremendous stardom.”
Hounsou has been working regularly in recent years on both the big and small screens, with notable story arcs on “ER” and “Alias” and appearing in such films as 2003’s “Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life” with Angelina Jolie and with Laurence Fishburne in “Biker Boyz.” Earlier this year, he co-starred in “Constantine” with Keanu Reeves and as Queen Latifah’s love interest “Beauty Shop.”
“Baby steps,” he says of his career moves. “No matter how you look at it, we’re minorities in the Hollywood world, and you still have so much to work for, and we don’t necessarily have the luxury of making mistakes. With us there’s stakes in mistakes, so you have to play your cards and be patient.”
He’s not waiting around for good scripts to fall into his lap, though. He’s developing several projects through his production company, including a World War II drama and an action thriller in which he would star.
“I’m definitely looking to be at a position of power in this business,” he says, showing off that winning grin. “The trick is to sort of keep yourself alive until.”