DJIMON HOUNSOU THE BENINESE-BORN ACTOR ON MAKING NOISE, MAKING MOVIES AND MAKING YOUR OWN LUCK…
From modelling and music videos to Oscar nominations for In America and Blood Diamond, Djimon Hounsou has come a long way in his thirty-plus-year career. Epic directors (Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott) are seemingly just the norm for the 60-year-old actor from Benin, who now picks up his mysterious character in horror prequel A Quiet Place: Day One. Pray silence, please…'
Do you feel audiences will be shocked by what A Quiet Place: Day One has in store?
For sure. I think there’s a huge anticipation about what happened on Day One. And in this instance, having Day One be staged in the city of millions. Of course, in New York City, sound is especially unpredictable and dangerous, making it even more exciting to have Day One taking place there. Having to shut down a city, the noisiest city in the world… that’s pretty spectacular.
Are you a horror fan? In my youth growing up in France, I was really into horror films. But shortly after that, in my early twenties, I started having some distance from horror films. I just didn’t enjoy the headache and emotional rollercoaster that it takes to enjoy a horror film. But I really did enjoy the first [A Quiet Place] that John Krasinski did, and of course, having the chance to be in the second one was quite wonderful.
We’ve also just seen you in Zack Snyder’s Rebel MoonPart Two: The Scargiver. Is it true you knew Zack years ago?
When I first arrived in California trying to pursue acting, I didn’t speak English. And he was in film school. And we met briefly and I posed for him. So that was how we first met. And little did I know that this young man that I met in film school, thirty-something years ago, is the same one who did all these great films like 300 and Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice.
What was it like when you first came to America?
My first day in California I went to Hollywood Boulevard to see what defines Hollywood when we watch a movie. In the early nineties – I was quite shocked and surprised by the look of Hollywood at that time. And had a sense of depression because that was not the vision I had when, every time, you were looking at a Hollywood movie. So that really intimid
