“I Still Struggling to Make a Dollar’ in Hollywood” – Djimon Hounsou

“I felt seriously cheated”- Djimon Hounsou

Beninese-American actor and model Djimon Hounsou told The Guardian that he still feels “tremendously cheated” when it comes to Hollywood pay. The actor’s career spans 33 years and includes two Academy Award nominations, action blockbusters like “Furious 7,” superhero movies such as “Shazam!” and collaborations with Steven Spielberg (“Amistad”) and Ridley Scott (“Gladiator”).

From sleeping rough in Paris to being cast as a slave three times in five years, the Blood Diamond star is no stranger to hardship. The actor told – The Guardian, “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.“

The Beninese-American actor and model Djimon Hounsou began to dream of becoming an actor. “The dream was just so big that I went all the way to America and forgot that I didn’t speak English!” he recalled.

The actor said he still has to prove why he needs to get paid. He went on to say- “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’… Film after film, it’s a struggle. I have yet to meet the film that paid me fairly.”

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The Blood Diamond star said Hollywood overlooked him from the beginning of his career when he started with his breakthrough role as a rebellious enslaved person in  the historical drama “Amistad.” Despite that being his breakthrough it was his co-star Anthony Hopkins who got the film’s sole Oscar nomination.

With 2016’s political action thriller film directed and co-produced by Edward Zwick “Blood Diamond,” the Academy nominated Hounsou for supporting actor and his co-star Leonardo DiCaprio for lead actor, despite the film equally focusing on Hounsou’s character.

The actor describes his childhood and growing up as “not the best childhood you could wish for a young man”. The Shazam actor was the youngest of five siblings, he was an introvert, but embraced the escapism of performing in school plays, all the while keeping his grander thespian ambitions hidden from a family with more middle-class aspirations.

Talking to the Guardian, the actor said -“From time to time, [Hollywood] themselves make the point of saying: ‘We should give him more, he’s a little under-appreciated.’ I think they recognize that themselves,” Djimon Hounsou concluded. “Hey, it’s the struggle I have to overcome!”