Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje: 'I didn't want to be black. So I joined the skinheads.'

Lost As an actor, which was seen worldwide. As a child he was a "black Oliver Twist", rented for the promotion of a white family. Now Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje is to make a film about his extraordinary life story

name Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, not one that fits easily said, but worth mastering because it is very likely to hear much more of the same in the future. Followers of the American series of fantasy deliberately confusing lost can remember his owner, Mr. Eko, the former drug Lord, turning false priest who was killed by the Black Man, also known as Monster. Or maybe not.

Some know him as Simon Adebisi, Africa intimidating convicted in the worship of the HBO series Prison

, while others may recognize their contributions to films like

Congo and

The Bourne

, and certainly its role as a spy for the U.S. during the next HBO-BBC

Hunted

strengthen its profile. But it is very possible that the writer and director of his own history Akinnuoye-Agbaje is a name to remember.

Armed with a grant

Film Annenberg grant, Akinnuoye-Agbaje has worked on the film for several years, the history of the development directors of institutes and laboratories Sundance screenwriters. Reading through the script with a cast that includes David Harewood and Marc Warren has become one of the most talked about events in the recent Sundance Film Festival in London.

title

agriculture

, refers to the practice of placing children in promoting informal many parents in Nigeria has continued in 1960 and 1970 Britain. Akinnuoye-Agbaje was one of those cases. In 1967, when he was six weeks old, his parents, a Nigerian couple studies in London - gave a white working class couple in Tilbury, then a fierce spring community of the island. Six months later, Tilbury Dockers led strikes in support of Enoch Powell.

Akinnuoye-Agbaje hopes to begin filming later this year. This is a tale of Dickens New difficulties, abandonment and solidarity, a kind of black

Oliver Twist

in the era of the post-war immigration. Now, a tall 44 year old man remembers his childhood vulnerability with a generous mixture of humor and intelligence that is difficult to consider that came through circumstances that would have crushed the highest of spirits.

Sometimes adoptive parents had 10 or more African children living with them, including two sisters Akinnuoye-Agbaje. "It was a strange relationship," recalls his feelings for his adoptive parents. "He was one of love, because that's all I knew, and that's what love is. I accept people for who they are If I'm honest, it was very hard My father was a truck driver, rarely at home .. The house was in charge of my mother, and because there were children 10 or younger, there was no time for individual attention. It was survival. He was the next meal. We had to go out and things that do not receive love Nick So in the sense of hugs or something like that: we do there was simply no room for the only shelter we had slept behind the sofa in the corner of the room - which was the case .. I get some kind of peace. "

crowded and chaotic at home, out of the girl was in constant danger of physical assault by local children, encouraged by his parents, a fear fueled violent black. He learned to feel the same way himself, fleeing black sailors who sometimes visited the springs distant places.

"I just remember being petrified," he says. "It was like the scarecrow for us. Fish and chips and corned beef, this is what I know. You know what I mean? "

As for the chips and corned beef, are doing very well. But the rest is not so easy to imagine. Such was his eagerness to fit in that, despite his light skin, tells a different story, thought of himself as white. And if your sense of self was not damaged enough is enough, he knew nothing of his African parents until one day, when he was eight years old, who appeared out of the blue hand and took him back to Nigeria.

"I felt like a kidnapping," he said, "and I was silent for about nine months. I could not speak the language, and if he speaks English who was abused by him. was quite a shock culture. brutal was so traumatized and afraid that I stopped talking and my [birth] parents thought there was something wrong with me, I thought I was possessed They tried several native ways to cope, and when to leave. t work I was sent home, back to Tilbury, but I kept my sisters there. "

One wonders if the authorities were in youth Adewale was treated like a human missile, fired back and forth between continents. If your natural parents are not ready to meet it, did not help that his adoptive parents were ill-prepared. "There was much ignorance in the family," he said, as a neutral observation rather than a complaint. "I do not think they were racist, but they were ignorant do not know that we had to put cream on the skin because the skin is hot and became cold ash They never knew they had to put the cream .. in hair. I did not know which felt different from Caucasians and those who were persecuted because of it. We have to increase as they would a white boy, but do not differ significantly different, and I learned why when I grow. "

That was another era, of course, when social services maintain remote participation in arrangements for child care leave and evaluate cultural differences alone. In the 1980s there was a reaction of identity. Development, particularly the adoption has become much stricter in regard to minority children. A policy of ethnic and cultural determinism was charged that left many children who otherwise would have found a loving home, care, because no adequate match race can be found.

• Identity
• and adoption are complex issues without easy adjustment, all the answers. But then Akinnuoye-Agbaje has no easy answers to offer. "It's an important question: are there people to adopt black children that blacks and whites My white film does not judge in this sense that makes you aware of possible dangers, but if something from this story is that?. if you're of a certain culture and promotes someone from another culture, you really take the time to learn about other cultures, because there will come a time when the child needs to know where it comes . "
also relieved that Adewale was young back in Tilbury as a matter of nine years, had also learned about his background, and that bothers him. For the first time was aware of being outside and in, and realize that it was not like his adoptive parents, despite his insistence that he was. "Now he had a point and that really highlighted my cultural identity crisis," he says. "I wanted to assimilate and abnormal return to normal as I did. I wanted to take the African experience, but obviously could not because that's what I was. much as I wanted to deny it, that was tormenting me, and reminded me of the images that come through the television, people the streets and at the end of my family at home. "

The more I tried to integrate, the more was rejected. After a year in Africa, his skin was darker, which made him even more evident among the white population. Reluctant to leave, was an ultimatum from his adoptive father: or fighting in the street or I have to fight in the house. With few options, he learned to defend and attack others. As became a teen who grew up in a young man, well built, with a reputation for violence.

"He had a foot and walk on their land or running, and there was no place to run in local skinhead Tilbury The group ran through the streets really did My Life - .. And everyone who was a shade darker than clear -. a pittance "

There is a natural human tendency to dramatize the story, the challenges embellish and exaggerate the difficulties, and the actors are not immune to the impulse. But not the courage or sentimentality to Akinnuoye-Agbaje. Instead, it displays a passionate desire and perhaps cathartic to explain the no less important, because what took place the next requires some explanation.

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