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NEW YORK -- Hollywood movie moguls, Oscar voters and fans of good cinema are learning how to spell and pronounce actor Djimon Hounsou's name.
The 33-year-old new American, who was born and raised in the West African nation of Benin and educated in France before emigrating to Los Angeles for good in 1990, is being touted as a best actor candidate in the Academy Awards.
In Steven Spielberg's epic historical film Amistad, Hounsou plays the pivotal role of Cinque, a rice farmer from Sierra Leone who is taken into slavery in 1839, illegally shipped to Cuba and sold for export to the U.S.
Based on a true story, the saga became an international cause celebre when Cinque led a violent mutiny on the slave ship, the Amistad. The Africans then mistakenly landed on American shores, where the 53 surviving 'slaves' were taken into custody and charged with murder. Their case was taken up by abolitionists and argued over the next two years all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Hounsou himself has endured racism in his life, some of the barbs and prejudices coming from whites and some of them from African-Americans who accuse him of talking like "a white boy" because he refuses to speak in street slang.
"I used to get quite frustrated at that because I don't think, in order to be really black, you need to be talking in street language or whatever they call it.
"I've grown up with whites. I left home when I was 13 (his middle-class family sent him to Lyons to live with his older brother and get an education) and I was always surrounded by white people. I've met wonderful white people and I've met, unfortunately, some who have an issue about me."
Combine that with African-Americans who reject him and Hounsou sometimes finds himself angry about the world. So much so that, before he became a fashion model in France and one of American photographer Herb Ritts' favorites -- which in turn led him to emigrate to Hollywood for an acting career -- Hounsou lived on the streets of Paris for a year.
"With all the problems I've seen, sometimes I think I would have been better left alone in Africa," he says sadly.
He ate out of garbage cans and bathed in a fountain near the Pompidou Centre. The first time he was 'discovered' by a photographer he refused the invite because he thought it was a pick-up ploy. (By coincidence, the photog found him again and brought him to designer Thierry Mugler, who catapulted the 6-foot-2 Hounsou to modelling fame).
But not for a second does Hounsou equate his worst times with those of the true-life characters in Amistad. "My life experience has nothing to do with this story. I would not be honoring this story and all the people involved by bringing my own life into the story. It would be wrong."
Hounsou says he "dedicated his life" to Amistad after Spielberg cast him because he was so moved by this slice-of-life saga. He even had to learn the Sierre Leone language Mende because Spielberg wanted historical accuracy. Hounsou speaks three dialects of Benin's Goun language, plus French and English, which he learned in L.A. from watching documentary films on TV on visits in 1988-89 and later when he moved there permanently. Yet Mende was a challenge.
"It was such a torture because I was dedicated to this picture. Ten days before the shooting, I couldn't even read a line (in Mende). I was a little bit shaky."
He learned, he prospered, he is superb in the role. And now he can laugh that he came all the way from Benin, via France, to learn English and finally to star in a Hollywood film in which he speaks three words of English: "Give us free." Hounsou says smiling, "That is humorous."
For the record, his name is pronounced: JI-man HOONsoo. Practise it for the Oscar nominations next month.