Adventures in Africa with Leo and Djimon

You've probably read by now how Leo DiCaprio stood up for his new best pal Djimon Hounsou against a gunman when they were shooting the intense action/drama Blood Diamond in Africa. Both men have a mutual admiration society thing going and we could tell, when we spoke to them near Beverly Hill's Rodeo Drive recently, that the two actors had intense, life-changing experiences while telling the story of conflict diamonds; stones smuggled out of Sierra Leone across the border to be sold to finance weapons for an ultra-bloody civil war. Both men urge their fans to make sure diamonds they buy are certified conflict-free. It's the least we can do to stop the financing of bloody warlords! As Djimon, who grew up in the African country of Benin says "to do nothing is intolerable. Just to do something is not enough".

Let's set the scene; beautiful Leo has his little goatee going again and was dressed in chic all black; long-sleeved tee, slacks and dress shoes. He has a tendency to gaze out the window between questions, contemplating his answer. Hot Djimon showed up in deep purple sweater over a white tee and had a smidgen of chin hair growing.

TeenHollywood: Djimon, as an African playing this character, what did you learn or bring to the part?

Djimon: When I came across this story, it was the most powerful human story I'd ever heard anyone be involved in. A major Hollywood studio taking this on.. it was a blessing for me personally. It was probably the most challenging story ever in so many areas. Reading Blood Diamond I realized it wasn't so much about the [actual] blood diamond. It enveloped so many other issues about Africa, about child soldiers, issues of refugees, the displacement of millions of people, throughout the continent. It effects the neighboring countries. So, it was a very powerful story for me. Being an African and being in Hollywood making movies, these are the kinds of stories I love to take on to bring more awareness to it in the world.

TeenHollywood: Leo, what was your knowledge of these conflict diamonds before doing this movie? How much did you learn?

Leo: I think I was like anybody else, I had heard whispers of it, but until I got there and until I started to do the research I didn't really quite understand the immense impact, certainly on Sierra Leone and other places in Africa. I had heard, certainly, the Kanye West song for example and bits of it in conversation, but it wasn't until I really got to Africa where I heard the firsthand accounts and started to read the books that I learned what really had happened.

TeenHollywood: What was your motivation to do this movie? Was it the social message?

Leo: First off, in the script, it was such a powerful character. It was such a powerful storyline and that's what you look for first. I wasn't personally going out seeking films with a social and political message. It has to be a good movie and it has to convey a message without the audience feeling they are being preached to and I really felt this script accomplished that. And to me it was very representative of a huge issue in the world today of corporate responsibility. Certainly Africa has been a prime target with gold and rubber and all kinds of other natural resources. And here was this character that was exploiting others that were less fortunate than him, dealing in the black market and not really being conscious of the world he lives in.

TeenHollywood: How did you go about getting your accent for the character?

Leo: Spending a lot of time with the locals, drinking beers with them, hearing their stories, a lot of guys from the South African military, just listening to them talk. And of course, I had an accent coach and he was there, guiding me through it, but we had conversations with these people. I made them say sentences over and over again. That's just the kind of thing you do. I wanted to definitely go to Africa early, because that whole area was completely alien to me. I had never really spent any time in Africa, let alone with a white South African man and their stories and accents. It was completely alien when I first heard of the film. It was all about going there.

TeenHollywood: Djimon, you've been nominated for an academy award before. You have star billing on this movie. Do you feel like you are competing with Leo for a best actor nomination?

Djimon: The Oscar race, I'll have to leave that to the studio to decide what we're doing but certainly I don't want to go against my buddy DiCaprio. If I can go for supporting and he go for best actor, I definitely will. Whatever comes of it will be a blessing. Certainly, the most important thing is to be able to tell a story that was that compelling and was true in its nature and I guess we accomplished that.

TeenHollywood: Leo, what about the Oscar buzz on your other film The Departed?

Leo: Uh, great. (Laughs.)

TeenHollywood: Do you feel that, with this role in Blood Diamond, you're sort of competing with yourself for a Best Actor nomination?

Leo: I dunno. Once again, that goes into the hands to all you [press] people to pick this all apart and compliment it or insult it. We'll see.

TeenHollywood: What was it like to act with Djimon ?

Leo: His character really is the heart and soul of the movie. It's the story of a man trying to find his son. And he embodied this character and the word is electrifying, the intensity that he gives in his performance. What can I say? He and I were kind of alone on set and it was me and him and there is no other actor who could have given this performance. He is astounding in this movie and the energy and the intensity that you get off him as an actor, you get to play off each other every day. He is quite a brilliant actor.

TeenHollywood: You play a pretty tough character in this film. Have you left boyhood behind for good? Is this your transition movie?

Leo: As far as growing up, what can I say? I have to be honest, I never thought about that ever throughout the entire course of my career about choosing a specific role because it would make me seem more man-like. (Laughs.) Even with roles like Catch Me If You Can I was 8 years or 10 years older than the character I played. You do these movies, you give it out to the world and you really have no idea how people are going to react to you [or] the subject matter. I've been in plenty of situations where I thought the film would turn out one way or my performance would be looked at one way and it was an entirely different situation. Once you make these movies you give it out to the world and you guys get to pick it apart. (Laughs.)

TeenHollywood: Djimon, you and Leo carry the film. What were some of the things you two talked about before or during shooting to get your relationship going?

Djimon: To be honest, you get a story like this, there's a tremendous amount of homework that has to take place for him and for myself. I had such a great respect and an affinity for his body of work so I was a little bit intimidated by it to be honest. I think he also had great respect for me as well so the first scene we just watched each other. The work was done already at home. Homework was done so you can only be there and live that. It was instinct to dive into the story and into those characters. We just sort of sized each other and went on. Slowly, we got to know each other and understand what we were making.

TeenHollywood: How long has it been since you've been in Africa and did you have to do a lot of research?

Djimon: I'm from Africa. Prior to filming this film, I just came back from Africa in December after last Christmas. Research, we had extensive documentaries available to us about the issue. We had had great writing for the story. The rest is pretty much left to your own understanding of what is going on within that conflict and, hopefully, you pour your heart into it and let it take its own course.

TeenHollywood: Being from Africa, do you feel a responsibility to bring attention to the issues going on there? Do you use your visibility as an actor to bring attention to those issues?

Djimon: Yes, of course. But I think we, as citizens of this world have a responsibility to do what is necessary to change the outcome of this [diamond] trading issue. I think, to do nothing, is intolerable and suddenly, to do something, is just not enough. We all must do everything we can to bring awareness so that everybody knows what the issues are with trading diamonds. Being African, of course, absolutely, I feel a need and a strong desire to be involved in films that deal with important issues. A lot of education that we are getting today, we are getting through movies. The movie industry now has a responsibility to tell compelling stories, stories that mean something that change our lives and make us reflect on the way that we conduct [ourselves] and treat one another and the way we treat neighboring countries and how we view people from different continents.

TeenHollywood: There is a great deal of physical action in this film. What did you do to get in shape for it?

Djimon: Whew! Well, if you weren't in shape before, you get there, you'll be in shape in a minute. That's the make-up of Africa. No matter who goes to Africa and what you go to Africa for, Africa just demands so much of you. The film we were making, it didn't occur to me how difficult, how challenging and how heartbreaking and emotionally devastating it was and the physicality and emotional content of the film were just overwhelming so day in and day out you were just in it. You couldn't necessarily get away from it. We shot in places that didn't have issues with conflict diamonds but you could see that throughout the whole continent of Africa, it's very difficult and people are living very challenging lives.

Leo: There was a lot of military training and we had a great stunt team too. We did a lot of faux military activities of hunting in the bush and tracking in the bush. That was really the tough stuff, getting that military background, because they are some of the best trained guys in the entire world as far as tracking is concerned and living in the bush. It was a matter of doing these exercises with them.

TeenHollywood: Djimon, we heard about you and Leo talking about chocolates in the jungle. Were you guys funny on set?

Djimon: For the longest time, I've been trying to remember what was funny about making this film. Leo drove me crazy a few nights ago, saying, 'come to my home. We've got to figure out how we are going to talk about this film. We need to find something funny about making this film [in case they ask us]' [we laugh]. I said to him 'it's been a few months now that I've been doing interviews and I can't possibly find anything funny about this film'. We had had light moments but there wasn't anything ha, ha, ha, ha funny. But, we did daydream about maybe being in Paris and having hot chocolate and croissants.

Leo: Djimon and I became very close. I mean you know, it is going to be a lasting friendship for me.

TeenHollywood: Djimon, do you feel the same way?

Djimon: I have to say that Leo, hopefully, will be a longtime and forever friend. I have to say from watching him as an actor and his awareness with the work..... being African, I can only embrace the guy who comes trying to better or bring awareness about my continent. Let's start from that. He has done things for me. He has offered his house for my friends that came to visit. He has given me his chef to cook for me. I found out that he stood up for me when somebody threatened to shoot me at a place in South Africa and he said 'you're going to have to go through me because I know this guy and I'm sure he didn't do anything wrong to you'. The guy showed him his gun. That's where Leo got that line from [for the movie]. The guy said 'we don't do things like you do in Hollywood. Bling, bling. Here it's bling..pow!' The guy told him blatantly that he was going to shoot me.

TeenHollywood: Wow! Why did the guy want to shoot you?

Djimon: To this day, we can't find out. We don't know. So, those are the reasons why I like him [laughter].

TeenHollywood: What is your opinion on buying diamonds now?

Djimon: I personally love diamonds. I don't have an issue with diamonds. I just have an issue with the ways that Western businesses go to Africa or various places and conduct business without giving back or without respecting the people or the environments of the places where they conduct business. We're certainly not discouraging people to buy diamonds. We just want to bring the awareness about the trade of diamonds and how it's conducted. There is an issue about the trade of conflict diamonds. People are losing their lives over it. I certainly knew more about it when we did Amistad because towards the end of that year, that's when the war broke out in Sierra Leone. The Amistad story came from Sierra Leone so we had had some people from there who actually went back home, then had to run back here because of the war.

Leo: I don't remember the last time I have bought a diamond. My mom is the only person I would buy one for. And she, for a while now, hasn't wanted one. But, that isn't to say, people shouldn't. Look, this comes from my conversations with Global Witness and Amnesty International. You have to go into the stores where you buy these diamonds and ask for a certificate and ask for some authentication that this isn't a conflict diamond and you have to, as a consumer, use your best judgment. That's one of the biggest ways this whole process can be stopped. Ultimately diamonds are a source of economic stability in Africa. But what they are specifically trying to target are these conflict diamonds that have funded warlords and civil strife in Africa. It's about stopping those specific diamonds.

TeenHollywood: Djimon, what can you tell us about the boy who played your son?

Djimon: [smiling] Ohhh, he's a wonderful boy; very smart, very intelligent, a sweet boy and very cunning and so awake as well. He is a wonderful young actor in South Africa.

TeenHollywood: That was a great scene when you are reunited with your son who had been kidnapped by the rebel army. How many times did you have to do that with tears streaming down your face? It was an incredible performance.

Djimon: Thank you. That particular scene, me finding my son again and trying to take him home was a difficult scene. When I read the story, that was probably the most heartfelt scene. You don't know how you are going to go about this thing until you get there and it's actually that moment, then you try to do it. You have conflicting things happening in your head; one being the lines, second being the accent you're trying to put on and, here's the son that you never had. I don't know what else to tell you. But, it was a very difficult scene to do, yeah.

TeenHollywood: The son is forced to be a child soldier. Can these child soldiers go back to a normal life?

Djimon: That's the problem and one of the reasons we're telling this story. These kids can not go back to their villages, the village that they completely ravaged and [where they] killed their mothers and fathers and sisters. They can not go back to those villages without reintegration into the system. Those kids are susceptible to being the rebels of tomorrow.

TeenHollywood: Did you suffer any injuries?

Djimon: Many of us really got hurt. Anything that has quite a bit of action in it, and especially this one, we couldn't have stunt doubles doing the things that we did. I busted my knee. Leo busted his knee and now has a very, very bad knee so he had to go to the hospital and he came back like a champion, banged up and patched up and he crawled on it and did what he had to do to finish this film. There wasn't a moment where anybody walked away from filming this film just because of an injury. It was a difficult film.

Leo: Yeah, Djimon got banged up, I hurt my knee. There are some of the sequences in this movie; a full week of squibs and diving behind cars. I've never been in an action sequence that was that well-choreographed.

TeenHollywood: Titanic?

Leo: Well, action. That was a big boat [laughs].

TeenHollywood: The violence is pretty tough to watch. Were any scenes in the script changed after you were shooting there?

Djimon: The violence in our story was toned down tremendously. It's impossible to watch, I couldn't sit and watch realistically, if we were to duplicate the kind of thing that happened during that conflict, you couldn't possibly sit an audience down to watch. So, in order to bring the awareness out, we had to tone it down tremendously. I wouldn't even give you an example of some of the atrocities that occurred during that conflict.

TeenHollywood: Leo, being in contact with Africa and the poverty, how has all that changed your own life? What did you learn from this whole experience?

Leo: Certainly playing a character like this who, as I said, was taking advantage of the poverty around him and taking advantage of the continent, it was uncomfortable as an actor to portray this man in front of an African crew in locations like Mozambique where there was a tremendous amount of poverty. Mozambique is a country that is having an economic resurgence, but four out of 10 people supposedly have HIV or AIDS. It's astounding. What I was left with after spending time with Africa, really was the power of the human spirit there. The fact that these people have been through so much, they have been in a civil war for 30 years but people were still dancing in the streets. The joy, the energy, the happiness they exuded to everyone was unbelievable and it made me come back home and sort of not want to listen to anyone's problems. I don't want to hear what we as Americans have to deal with. When you are immersed in a place like that for six months and you see the extreme levels of what people have to deal with there, yet they are able to keep a positive attitude.

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Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.