Yahoo Autos Djimon Hounsou Is ‘Still Struggling to Make a Dollar’ in Hollywood: ‘I Feel Tremendously Cheated’ in Terms of Pay and Workload
Djimon Hounsou’s acting career spans 33 years and includes two Academy Award nominations (“In America” and “Blood Diamond”), action blockbusters like “Furious 7,” superhero movies such as “Shazam!” and collaborations with Steven Spielberg (“Amistad”) and Ridley Scott (“Gladiator”), yet he told The Guardian that he still feels “tremendously cheated” when it comes to Hollywood pay.
“I’m still struggling to try to make a dollar!” Hounsou said. “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.”
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“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,’” Hounsou continued. “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.”
“I still have to prove why I need to get paid,” he added. “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.”
Hounsou said Hollywood has overlooked him from the beginning, starting with his breakthrough role as a rebellious enslaved person in Spielberg’s “Amistad.” Despite earning universal acclaim, it was his co-star Anthony Hopkins who got the film’s sole Oscar nomination. With 2016’s “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.
