Age, wisdom led to role of Whitaker’s lifetime

LOS ANGELES — It may end up being the role of a lifetime for Forest Whitaker, and if so, the actor said it took all his age and experience to pull it off.

Whitaker has swept through Hollywood’s award season winning almost every prize in sight for his portrayal of brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in “The Last King of Scotland.”

Last month he was nominated for an Oscar for leading actor, and Hollywood oddsmakers believe the 45-year-old has the best shot at taking home the film industry’s top acting award.

“For me, honestly, this does have a different feeling, mostly because I’m at a different place in my life,” he said in a recent interview. “It takes a while to get to a place like this. It takes age.”

At 6 feet 2 inches tall, Whitaker’s physical presence, combined with his personal charm, made him a strong fit for the role of Amin. He has the stature to play a menacing dictator, yet his soft-spoken manner sets people at ease.

A military commander, Amin seized power in the African nation in a 1971 coup and ruled until 1979, when he was forced to flee. Under his police state, as many as 300,000 people were tortured, killed or mysteriously “disappeared.”

Yet as brutal as Amin’s regime was, some Ugandans are ambivalent about the dictator and choose to remember his warm, public persona and enthusiasm for sports.

Whitaker’s portrayal stands out because the actor captures the dictator’s charm and his brutality, often in the same scene.

Beauty and Beast

Veteran critic Bob Strauss of the Los Angeles Daily News said Whitaker “makes Amin fun, funny, vulnerable and poignant while never letting us forget his murderous monomania.”

Whitaker said it was one of the toughest roles for which he has ever prepared. He talked with brothers and sisters of Amin — the dictator died in 2003 ­— and Amin’s victims, as well as former military generals and government ministers. He learned to speak with a Swahili dialect.

“The hardest part to figure out was talking Swahili. I really tried to trick my brain into thinking English was a second language,” Whitaker said.

The actor first gained Hollywood notoriety as a football player in the 1982 teen classic “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” and followed with numerous parts on television and diverse roles in a wide range of films from “The Crying Game” to “Panic Room.”

He showed his directing skills with 1995’s widely-acclaimed “Waiting to Exhale.” But Whitaker said he thought he might not work again in 2002 after a creative falling out with Hollywood veteran Bill Cosby over a film version of Cosby’s “Fat Albert” cartoon that Whitaker was hired to direct.

What followed was a series of smaller acting roles on TV and in independent films, and a job directing 2004’s lighthearted romantic comedy “First Daughter.”

(Reuters)