26th March, Mumbai: “Shazam! Actor Djimon Hounsou of “Fury of the Gods” admitted that the living in Hollywood wasn’t always ideal. Hounsou admitted he felt underpaid in Hollywood after more than 30 years in the business and claimed he had financial difficulties.
He admitted in an interview with The Guardian that “I’m still fighting to try to make a dollar!” “I’ve worked with some folks who are quite wealthy and have very few of my accomplishments. Hence, both financially and in terms of the workload, I feel extremely cheated,” he continued.
Hounsou opened up about how he was constantly treated with contempt and had to fight for the compensation he believed he earned. He told the media source, “I still have to prove why I need to get compensated. They constantly come at me with the lowest possible pitch: ‘We only have this much for the job, but we genuinely think you can add so much.’ It’s a challenge, movie after movie. I have yet to encounter a movie that treated me fairly.”
The 58-year-old actor claimed that he did not experience any support for his performances. In addition, he opened out about how he played the character of a slave three times in a five-year period and how he felt frustrated by the dearth of opportunities for Black actors.
Hounsou said, “I felt severely tricked.
“Now, we speak a lot about how overwhelmingly white the Oscars are, but I recall a period when I had no support at all—not from my own people, not from the media, nor from the business itself. It seemed to say, “You should be pleased that you were nominated, and that’s it,” Hounsou stated.
In the Steve Spielberg picture “Amistad,” where he played a rebellious oppressed person, Hounsou first gained notoriety.
Hounsou claimed, however, that Hollywood passed him up because Anthony Hopkins, his co-star in the film, received a nomination instead of him.
Despite the fact that Hounsou was nominated for his roles in “In America” and “Blood Diamond” with Leonardo DiCaprio, he stated that it was unjust that his co-star was nominated for best actor given that the film centres on Hounsou’s character.