Famous Person Essay: Djimon Hounsou
Djimon Hounsou was born on April 24, 1964 in Cotonou, Benin. Son of Albertine Hounsou (mother) and Pierre Hounsou (father), he is the fifth and youngest child of the family. Therefore, by the time he finished high school all his brothers had already left the family house except his older brother Edmond Hounsou. Their parents were old and poor, so Djimon had no opportunity to further his education but nonetheless was determined to become successful and take his parents out of misery. According to IMDb (Internet Movie Database) he once stated “We were not a rich African family. Everything was very basic. If you knew the way I lived then, and the way I’m living now… it’s day and night.” Cotonou, is a beautiful exotic country in West Africa, but it is very difficult to make it to the top, especially when one is coming from a very low class such as Djimon’s family. Now he was trapped, he needed to be someone independent and self-sufficient but the circumstances were unfair, and everything seemed to be against him. He had the choice between staying in his native country and live the life his parents had lived and die poor, or travel and explore the world hoping for success.
Afterwards, he managed to get himself a French student visa and at the age of seventeen/eighteen began his college education in France. After one year, of study he decided to give up on school because he did not have enough funds to support himself and pay for his tuition. Also he believed that he was smart enough to find his way without a degree. On December 3, 1997 he was quoted in the Daily News saying “School bored me. Being educated and being intelligent are two different things. I thought I was smart enough. And I wanted to be an entertainer. I stopped going to school as a way of saying I was mature, a way of saying I was going to choose who I was going to become”. He was now illegal in France. He came on a student visa but now he was not a student...