Forest Whitaker awarded at Cannes!
American actor and producer Forest Whitaker is this year's winner of the honorary Golden Palm for Lifetime Achievement...
American actor and producer Forest Whitaker is this year's winner of the honorary Golden Palm for Lifetime Achievement. The award was presented to him two days ago at the opening of the Cannes Festival.
“It is a tradition of the Cannes Festival to pay tribute to those who created its history, and Forest Whitaker is one of them. He is the young actor that Clint Eastwood discovered in "Birds" and the man who, by expanding his view of the world, helps those who are suffering and struggling. All honor goes to Whitaker. For him, this Golden Palm is a gesture of gratitude from the film world” - said the director of the Cannes Film Festival, Pierre Lescure.
Forest Whitaker is best known for his role as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in “The Last King of Scotland”. This role brought him an Oscar, a Bafta, a Golden Globe, and numerous other awards, and many consider it one of the best-performed roles in the 21st century.
Whitaker was born on July 15, 1961, in Longview, Texas, but moved to Los Angeles with his family when he was four. His father, Forest Steven Whitaker Jr., was an insurance salesman and the son of novelist Forest Whitaker Sr. His mother, Laura Francis Smith, was a self-supporting professor and received two degrees while raising children.
As an adolescent, he traveled daily from Carson to the predominantly white Palisades High School in western Los Angeles. In high school, he played American football with Jay Schroeder, a future NFL professional.
While in high school, he also attended voice lessons, performed in musicals, and involved himself with acting. His first role was also the main one, in Dylan Thomas' drama, "Under Milk Wood".
He started attending classes at the "Cal Poly" faculty in Pomona, with a football scholarship, but he gave up due to a back injury. He was admitted to the University of Southern California Conservatory of Music (USC) where he studied opera as a tenor. One American critic stated that he often gives the villains an unnecessary "mentality" and makes them better than they are.
“That's a lie. I don’t make them better than they are. Of course, you will not forgive them for the bad things they did, but you have to understand them and that is what interests me in playing bad characters” - Whitaker said in an interview. He added that he was fascinated by the ability of people to do evil.
Whitaker also participated in the presidential campaign in support of Barack Obama. He often received offers to play historical figures in films. In addition to being a great actor and producer, he is engaged in humanitarian work, and in ten years his organization has managed to help over a million and a half people, mostly in African countries, but also in Mexico and Los Angeles. He has a black belt in karate. In the spirit of his name, he named his children Ocean, Sonnet, Autumn, and True.
