| Forest Whitaker Becomes The First King Of Hollywood |
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 Forest Whitaker, who won Best Actor in a Leading Role at the '07 Oscars, has come a long way since "Fast Times At Ridgemont High"   Whitaker with his wife, Keisha, and his statue, Oscar, at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in L.A.  Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin, in his military garb  Director Kevin Macdonald and Forest Whitaker on set  Whitaker as the sometimes charming Idi Amin addressing the press But like Idi Amin, Whitaker has defied expectations, especially when he starred in the award-winning "The Crying Game," where, much to everyone's surprise, he played a straight man who unknowingly fell for a transsexual. Whitaker has always been an actor that has disregarded such concerns and racial stereotypes as well. foxsearchlight.com/thelastkingofscotland Q: How did this project begin? FW: Producers Lisa Breyer and Andrea Calderwood gave me the book about five years ago. I liked it and we talked about it, but there wasn't a director and it wasn't until years later that Kevin became involved, and when Kevin became involved I met with him and worked with him and he decided that he wanted me to play the part. Q: What kind of research did you do? FW: I started first in LA, because I started working on my Swahili, which I thought was really important, because I wanted to really start to believe in my head that English was my second language. And then I start working on my dialect and the accordion, and then I started studying all the books, so many books about him, the documentaries, the tapes, there's so much film footage because he was a showman. He loved the press, so you can get so much material. And then when I got to Uganda I met with his brother, his sisters, his generals, his ministers, his girlfriends, everybody in Uganda who's like 20-30 or above, they have a personal experience with Idi Amin. They've seen him, they watched him on the streets, they knew him... it was just 1979 when he left power. You talk to everyone and they're explaining their views and opinions of the man, and you're traveling around and eating and understanding the customs. I had a Ugandan assistant, Daniel, who helped me get into the culture and try to make it my own. Q: During your research process, what helped you round out the character? FW: I knew he wasn't the caricature I had seen him be. I knew he was a complete human being. I had seen an image of what they projected to me. I had to take things like that with a grain of salt. The minute you start to define the guy, the minute you decide, "Oh, you know, when he comes in the room he likes to use the bathroom first. He likes to take showers in the cold, he doesn't like to go to this theater." Then all of a sudden the person becomes more complete. I knew that I didn't have any impressions like that, so for me it was kind of an opportunity to try to explore it and understand that. Q: What was your reaction to playing the part of Idi Amin? FW: I didn't have an image of him other than a sort of poster stamp image of this sort of mad dictator/general or whatever, so when I was looking at the project, it was an opportunity to kind of explore. As an artist it was a great opportunity to get to play a character like that and to explore him as a person would help me grow. So I thought it was a great opportunity. Q: What was the most difficult part of becoming Idi Amin, and what do you think ultimately turned him into the person he became? FW: Trying to find the spirit of this guy took a lot of work. I worked really hard trying to figure it out. I wanted to make it so that anything I did was like the way I believe this man would behave. It's really like accessing the spirit of the person. For me, acting is a little bit of a spiritual experience, so for me I'm deeply searching for a connection inside of myself to look for the places and I'm also looking outside of myself to pull down energy inside of myself to play the character. So that's a process that takes work. Q: Was there a particularly difficult element you had to wrangle with? FW: There were so many technical things that I had to master--I was lowering my voice to his register, I was trying to understand the dialect. Actually I think all that stuff helped me to figure out the character. It was like an aide. At least I had a direction I knew I was trying to go in. I'm trying to think what I felt the most difficult… It was just a process. I was just continually searching, so I never stopped for a concern. Even while we were shooting, if we were off and we would go to the top of the hill, I would say, "Oh, I want to go to that mosque, because he used to go to that mosque," or "I'm going to go meet this guy because he knows him," or "I'm going to go call his son, and maybe he'll meet me." Up until the very last day of the shoot, I was still doing work and research. So that difficulty problem, it was something I was continually searching for throughout the whole entire process. Q: What was it like meeting his family? FW: I met his brother and sister in Arua, I flew up there. They were really apprehensive at first. First we had to go meet with this minister, and I met the guy, and I didn't know he was a minister at the time, but he was going to bring me to him, and then finally he decided that we were okay to bring us there. And then his brother wouldn't talk to us, and then finally I pulled out this letter that I had in my pocket that was from the president's office saying we have permission to shoot a film there, and for him that was the most important. Then finally, we sat underneath this tree and he started telling me stories about Idi Amin growing up. He was extremely poor, his sister, the house they lived in was full of mortar holes. It had been blown up by the troops that came in after, and he was just trying to survive, but he helped me a lot, figuring the man out. Q: What do you think made him so likeable at times? FW: I wasn't trying to make him likeable. If you look at all those tapes he's an extremely charming guy. He was extremely well-liked. The reason they were trying to destroy him, the reason he made the coup, was because he was getting so popular with the people. Obote, the president, wanted him out, wanted him away. He was so popular. He was popular with the British, the British brought him to Sandhurst to train him, the Israelis taught him paratrooping, he was very popular. I think even as the atrocities started to happen, as the paranoia started to happen, he was extremely popular, even still with the press. They were more interested on reporting on his antics, his partying, his behavior, or his costumes, rather than reporting on what was going on in the country until it was really deep into the horrors of his reign. |