Djimon Hounsou

“It's a part of most actors to want to be in an animated feature; to extend the legacy of your career.”

“As a young boy, I had strange dreams of affecting people and somehow being instrumental in changing the makeup of Africa and helping to improve life there.”

“The gym can serve as an excellent place where kids and young men and women can really empty their issues right on the floor.”

“I happened to the be the fifth child of my family, so everybody was already grown and had left home already.”

“When most people in the West think about Africa, is their first thought about the game reserves and who's chasing gazelles, or are they looking at Africans as people who are equally equipped to do great things, as in the West?”

“I feel like Africans are too often portrayed as people on the National Geographic channel: the image is of an African man in a loincloth chasing a gazelle. It's not intentionally racist; I wouldn't call it racist at all. It's a lack of understanding another culture.”

“One of the things I find extremely challenging about the continent of Africa is that when the immediate needs and the social needs of people are not met, that kills dreams, and it's all about survival.”

“Some of the reason why you have so many divorces is that we tend to get married, most of the time, not for ourselves, but for others, or for how it looks to others.”

“Rehearsals are set up so that you find out all the nuances about your character. You never want to beat yourself up. It's about finding the right direction, and most of the time, the right direction is not what you think is the right direction. That's why the director's there: to guide you there.”

“Until you are somewhat comfortable and confident and embrace who you are as a person, you can't possibly love somebody else because you don't like yourself that much.”

“The rocky time came right after I left school. I spent a lot of time at night navigating the streets of Paris trying to find something to eat.”

“I like stories that have a social impact and social attributes to them. That's the whole reason we make films: to broaden our limited view of things and to see how life is evolving elsewhere.”

“The lack of diversity, specifically in genre films and the superheroes our kids grow up watching and emulating, they can't really identify with. When you see the same thing, over and over again, and it seems not to speak of you and your heritage and your culture, it leaves you out of this world a little bit.”

“Even while modeling, I was still practicing kung fu and boxing as sports.”

“If anything, Calvin Klein is the iconic company in terms of fashion. They do have iconic images for their campaigns.”

“I hope more people will ask diamond companies to continue changing the way they do business in Africa.”

“Africa is a continent that provides so much for the existence of the rest of the world. We go around the world and cultivate so many things.”

“My passion is more about bringing the stories out from the African continent mixed with the West.”

“America has this understanding of Africans that plays like National Geographic: a bunch of Negroes with loincloths running around the plain fields of Africa chasing gazelles.”

“A lot of times, we also have to live and work. You have to make money to pay rent. In that respect, I don't think you can be so demanding. Those great stories are not the normal stories that come on a daily basis. It's a struggle to land those roles. Everybody is looking for the good parts.”