Djimon Hounsou: Hollywood’s Unsung Hero

Hounsou’s ability to work a look is unparalleled. He is effortless, fluid—a glide of his arm here, a brush of his hand there, and then, a flash of that magnetic smile. “My old days modeling… it comes back a little bit,” Hounsou grins, surveying the shots on the monitor.

Watching him in front of the camera, the flecks of gray in his beard catching the light, it’s clear what the late Thierry Mugler was drawn to 30 years ago when he made Hounsou — then sleeping on the streets of Paris — his muse, launching a modeling career that included high-profile runway shows and Janet Jackson and Madonna music videos.

It’s what we’ve always known to be true: when Djimon Hounsou is in front of a camera, magic happens. “It’s impossible to get a bad shot,” comments photographer Marquis Perkins between scenes.

In film, too, Hounsou has a knack for edrtnhancing both great and not-so-great projects (Baggage Claim, anyone?). His early roles remain etched in movie history — who can forget him pleading “Give us, us free,” in the courtroom scene of Amistad, or his leap to defend himself against Leonardo DiCaprio’s mercenary in Blood Diamond? He has a quiet ferocity that commands the screen.

“Sometimes I hear comments from studios like, ‘Oh, Djimon Hounsou is too noble to play this role,’” he shares. “It’s nice to hear that the studios are thinking that.” It signifies that he has achieved one of his early ambitions: to portray characters of integrity rather than ones that perpetuate stereotypes, particularly of Africans.

Over three decades and nearly 60 films, Hollywood has relied on the stature Hounsou brings to his roles; from Gladiator to How to Train Your Dragon Two, and a host of Marvel and DC properties in between. And yet, leading man status continues to elude him. Decades later, fans are asking, where is Hounsou’s starring role? Why is he still relegated to supporting characters with limited time on screen?

His fans continue to rally: “This man is in every movie I watch and he doesn’t have the credibility he deserves,” @lino.rar writes under one of Hounsou’s Instagram posts. “You are soooo underrated!!! A massive talent!!” @yesgyal writes under another. Comments like these, along with articles calling out the “big-budget purgatory” he’s been in, reflect the widespread recognition of his undervalued talent.

This persistent underappreciation frustrates him, too. Last year, Hounsou told the Guardian that he felt “cheated” by Hollywood and that he didn’t feel he’s fairly compensated for his work. When asked if he still feels that way, he replies with candor, “Not much has changed since then, so I still feel that way. I stay with the same quote that I said.”

But he’s quick to balance this with gratitude. “I’ve been able to sustain a career, and I think that’s something to highlight and acknowledge,” he says. “Even with whatever I feel is lacking.”

“I just keep it vague in terms of the [un]fair treatment of the industry because at the end of the day, I can’t blame the studios,” he says. “The studios have been quite supportive of me and have embraced me a great deal.” His unassailable self-respect is evident. “I feel a sense of great pride to have lived on three different continents and to have survived in the film industry. It’s like swimming in shark-infested waters — you may make it, you may not.”

There’s a lot we know about how Djimon Hounsou made it. About how he grew up, the youngest of five, in Cotonou, hiding his thespian dreams from a family that wanted a more traditional academic path for him; how he left Benin as a young teenager with his brother; how he landed up homeless in the French capital; how he arrived in LA without speaking English to pursue acting. But there’s much we don’t, and will never, know about what it took to get here — the challenges he overcame, the trials that forged his character.

All of it has endowed Hounsou with a weight he brings to everything he takes on. Movie roles, yes, but anything he lends his voice to, from rhino poaching to climate change. When he speaks, you lean in — not just because he’s soft-spoken, but because you want to, need to, hear what he has to say.

Rather than focusing on what Hollywood hasn’t provided him, Hounsou directs his energy towards what he can offer the world. In 2019, he founded the Djimon Hounsou Foundation (DHF) to combat modern slavery and human trafficking, and to help Africans in the diaspora reconnect with their cultural, ancestral, and spiritual roots. “The aftermath of the Transatlantic Slave Trade is a loss of knowledge,” he explains. “If you don’t know where you come from, you don’t know where you are.”

The foundation’s mission is deeply personal for Hounsou, arising from his own quest to grasp his history, which he didn’t learn much about as a youngster. “How can Afro-descendants relate to their heritage when people like me, who were born in Africa, often feel disconnected from their roots?” he questions.

With approximately 200 million people of African descent in the Americas — a legacy of the nearly 13 million Africans kidnapped and enslaved–Hounsou aims to help reclaim these lost connections. Without this knowledge, he believes, there is no way forward.

As he explains, “it’s kind of like a ship at sea, a beautiful ship with a beautiful motor that works perfectly fine and it can go fast. If you put it out at sea with no guidance, no captain directing it, that boat would just circle round and round, and eventually hit the shore or run out of steam and die down.” He adds: “If you don’t know how to navigate yourself, it can harm you a great deal in your evolution.”

It’s fitting that Hounsou uses this metaphor, as the film Amistad, about a 19th-century slave ship, even with its flaws, helped him realize the gaps in his own understanding and fueled his desire to foster reconciliation and reconnection.

In this spirit, the DHF launched Africa Reconnect, an annual series of music and sports events. The centerpiece is Run Richmond 16.19, a run/walk of either 6.19 or 16.19 kilometers, designed to highlight historical sites in Richmond, where the first slave ship is believed to have docked in 1619. This year’s event takes place on September 21. Future events will include two other locations, Liverpool in the U.K. and Ouidah, in Hounsou’s home country.

Each city features artist Stephen Broadbent’s Reconciliation Triangle, which, when connected, forms the Triangle of Hope — promoting forgiveness through acknowledgment and using reconciliation and justice to shape a new future. As Hounsou sees it, gathering at these sites to reclaim steps once taken forcibly and brutally, now willingly and joyfully, will help transform the spaces themselves.

“It’s a cultural event that lets you experience 400 years of Black history in America,” he says. “I thought, if we could do that in a place where some of our ancestors were lynched, if we come together like that regularly, we’ll change the course of what took place there,” he says. At the Gate of No Return in West Africa, the aim is for participants to reverse the route of the slave trade, symbolically coming home to the roots of culture.

In working on Africa Reconnect, Hounsou found the disconnect between past and present jarring. “It’s the lack of connection that shocked me,” he says. “We can complain about Donald Trump, and the racism here in America, and the racism in Europe, but at the end of the day, all of those countries would not be self-sufficient without resources from Africa.”

“We owe it to ourselves to look to where we come from,” Hounsou continues, “and know that the continent of Africa is feeding the rest of the world.” To him, it’s empowering: “If you believe salvation only lies in the West, you’re setting yourself up for modern-day slavery.”

Hounsou is keenly aware of how narratives about Africa are evolving, especially with the global rise of Afrobeats. “I was a fan of African music long before it became popular in the West,” he notes wryly. And while he appreciates artists like Burna Boy, Wizkid and Davido, it’s the tribal music of his homeland that soothes his soul.

Though he misses Benin deeply, Hounsou hasn’t visited since 2019, but hopes to return by year’s end. In the meantime, he keeps the spirit of his homeland alive in his work. In the sequel to Netflix’s Rebel Moon, Hounsou’s General Titus sings a chant by Beninese singer and guitarist Lionel Loueke, meant to rally village warriors. “He wrote it in our dialect, Fon. It was beautiful,” says Hounsou, who performed the song in the film (remixed by Black Coffee as “Ode to Ancestors”).

Through directing and producing stories from Benin, and Africa at large, under the banner of his production company, Fanaticus, Hounsou further strengthens his ties to home. It’s also a way to deal with the limitations he faces as an “unsung hero of Hollywood,” as one Reddit user put it. “You navigate the water as it becomes rough,” he says. “Trying to keep a legacy intact is very hard in this industry. I have to oftentimes watch my back. It is treacherous. But nothing comes easy.”

His hard-won career is still without one thing, though. “It would be nice to win an Oscar,” he says. “It was nice to be nominated twice [for In America and Blood Diamond]. The third time — it seems like they forgot about me,” Hounsou adds with a sly smile.

Still, he wouldn’t change how anything has played out. He’d tell his young self today to “continue dreaming big.” For him, it all comes back to having a strong sense of self. “Nothing happens unless you can truly see and emotionally feel what you’re envisioning,” he says. “It’s all about having direction and a clear vision of what you want to achieve.” It worked for Hounsou’s early dreams, so it can only work for his future ones, too.

CREDITS:

Photographer: @marquisperkins

Lighting tech: @jpierrebonnet

Stylist: @tiffanistyles for This Represents

Market editor: @coralreefin

Fashion team: Elizabeth Fonseca, Myles Colbert, Will Lewis

Groomer: @brittywhitfield