Biography

Came to Paris from Benin at the age of 13, couldn't find a job and ended up a vagrant, sleeping under bridges and rummaging in trash cans for food. Things changed for the better when fashion designer Thierry Mugler discovered him and made him a fashion model.

Learned English by watching television.

Name pronounced Jie-mon Hahn-soo.

Eighth black male to receive an Oscar-nomination for acting. The seven others are: 1963 Sidney Poitier for Lilies of the Field--Best Actor; 1982 Louis Gossett, Jr. for An Officer and a Gentlemen--Best Supporting Actor; 1989 Denzel Washington for Glory--Best Supporting Actor; 1996 Cuba Gooding, Jr. for Jerry Maguire--Best Supporting Actor; 2001 Denzel Washington for Training Day--Best Actor; 2005 Jamie Foxx for Ray--Best Actor; 2005 Morgan Freeman for Million Dollar Baby--Best Supporting Actor; 2007 Forest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland--Best Actor.

Was in Janet Jackson video "Love Will Never Do Without You" (1992).

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. --Daily News, December 3, 1997.

America has this understanding of Africans that plays like National Geographic: a bunch of Negroes with loincloths running around the plain fields of Africa chasing gazelles. Meanwhile, we have Africans and African-Americans, contemporary men, with great stories, great integrity, great heroes and nobody wants to see or hear about those African heroes and those African-American heroes. One day, I will be in a position to play those great human beings on-screen.

The gym can serve as an excellent place where kids and young men and women can really empty their issues right on the floor.

Africa is my continent. It is where I opened my eyes.

Funny enough, every role that I have had, I try to tone down my accent or speak with better diction.