Gratuitous Brunette: Djimon Hounsou

Birthday wishes go out today to Djimon Hounsou, whose rags to rag-trade riches story should serve as an inspiration to super-hot muscles upon muscles guys everywhere*... Born in Benin, he later moved to Paris, where - according to the official story - he was 'homeless'; now, there's eating out of dumpsters homeless and there's merely couch-surfing, which most accounts of his life don't differentiate. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say he was probably more the latter than the former.

Whatever, his time of hardship ended when he was discovered by Thierry Mugler, which led to his modeling career; his first onscreen appearance was in the the 1990 Janet Jackson video Love Will Never Do (Without You), which co-starred Antonio Sabato, Jr. and which has been featured on the Pop Culture Institute in the past.  His first film appearance was the 1990 film adaptation of Sandra Bernhard's one-woman show Without You I’m Nothing.

He has since racked up an impressive array of screen credits: Amistad, Gladiator, Blood Diamond... His Oscar-nominated performance in 2004's In America was the first ever for a black African. Unfortunately, he's fallen in with a bad crowd; recently he's been seen squiring around Kimora Lee Simmons - a woman so trashy and vapid she makes Paris Hilton look like Mary Poppins. Which means I've been crossing my fingers and hoping; having gotten himself out of a difficult situation once before maybe, just maybe, he'll be able to do it again**...

*The lesson being if you're super-hot and you have muscles on your muscles, you'll probably manage to eke out some kind of living without too much effort.
**Which seems less and less likely now; in May 2009 she gave birth to their son Kenzo Lee.  They got married, yada yada...
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