Djimon Hounsou Discusses His Lengthy Career, Working With Steven Spielberg On ‘Amistad’ & His New Production Venture At AfroBerlin

“They only gave me a couple of pages of dialogue. I thought it was an audition for an extra role,” actor Djimon Hounsou said this afternoon when quizzed on his 1997 breakout, Amistad, during a keynote session at this year’s AfroBerlin conference.

Hounsou was the headline guest at this year’s AfroBerlin conference. The wide-ranging keynote session was hosted by Deadline. Hounsou spoke about his childhood in Benin, moving to France as a teen, where he became a fashion model before moving to Los Angeles to chase acting roles.

After featuring in a few smaller productions, Amistad was Hounsou’s largest production at the time. He told the audience in Berlin that he was the first actor to be brought in for an audition. And when he arrived, the casting director, unbeknownst to all the actors, began asking whether they could speak any African language and, if so, perform their assigned scenes in the dialect.