David Oyelowo on his new role on HBO: It's a 'very scary thing'


Image result for david oyelowo
David Oyelowo

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — When he decided to become an actor, David Oyelowo enlisted two co-conspirators. The man who played Martin Luther King in "Selma," and costarred in "The Help," "The Butler" and TV's "MI-5," sneaked into drama school with the help of his teacher.
"I had a great teacher who just said, 'I wouldn't say this to everyone because it's a precarious profession, but I really think you can make a living doing this.' So she helped me secretly apply to drama school because my Nigerian parents at that time were not partial to the idea of going into anything to do with the arts," he says in his genteel English accent.

"They're far more academically minded. But I got a scholarship to go to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts."
The other ally in his corner was God. "At the age of 16 I became a Christian," he confides. "My parents were (Christians) but actually I ran in a different direction. Because my parents were, I was like, 'This is a load of BS. What am I doing in church?' I made a mistake of striking a deal with God. I said, 'If you're real, you need to turn up for me in three months. And if you don't, I'm out.'"
Evidently God seized the challenge. "I had a very, very dramatic spiritual experience where God infiltrated in my life in a way that I couldn't deny," says Oyelowo (who pronounces his name oh-yeh-lo-wo.)
"I heard a voice I hadn't heard before saying, 'There's nothing you can do to make me love you less.' That floored me because, for me, religion was conditional. If I'm good, then God will like me, and I will go to heaven. But the fact that there was a discernable voice saying to me, 'No, it's not about what you do, it's about who I am in relation to you and how much I want to be in your life.' So my life was never the same beyond that moment."
That encounter is difficult to explain, he says. "To talk about God speaking to you is a bit like trying to tell someone what it's like to fall in love. You know it when you feel it. It's a very real thing for you, but it's almost impossible to articulate to someone else unless they've felt it themselves, unless they know what that is."
For 23 years Oyelowo, 39, has never wavered, either in his calling or his faith. Though he's occasionally taught acting, he's never held a job outside the field of acting since he began.
He says he never frets over the roles he chooses, though they can be risky. The most daring so far is his role as the psychologically twisted young man in "Nightingale," premiering on HBO Friday. It's a tour-de-force part in which Oyelowo is the only character in a shuddering thriller.
"Some of the most scary things I've ever done have had to do with acting," he nods, seated on a gray modular couch in a suite at HBO headquarters. "To play in this film is a very scary thing. To be the only actor in a film for 90 minutes and to try to express the emotional truth of that is very exposing. And if you fail, you fail alone. At least if it's a group of actors then, 'OK, we tried.' With this, it's me and me and me and me."
Sighing, he adds, "There's a world in which you see that opportunity and that reality, and you walk away from it because you don't want to cut your career short. Actors generally are all on varying scales of knowing that one day they're going to get found out. I think I have ability as an actor, but you never know."
His role in "Nightingale" leaves little doubt. But when he and his wife of 16 years, Jessica, decided to pull up stakes and move to the states, he didn't work for 14 months and was wracked with doubt.
Ironically it was a film that was never released that turned the tide. He played Muddy Waters in a movie called "Who Do You Love?" And though no one ever saw it, it's part of his audition tape. When producers observed a sophisticated Brit with an upper-class English accent playing a blues singer from Mississippi, "It's not who they saw walk in," smiles Oyelowo.
While he relishes his work, it's not his raison d'etre. The father of four children, Oyelowo says it is his family that guides and sustains him. "I saw my first born son, I remember it so vividly. After he was born, Jess and I came home and put him in his cot. It was a tiny cot, but he only inhabited a tiny corner of it. We were babies ourselves. And I remember us standing there and I was thinking, 'Oh, my goodness! I am responsible for that little life.' It gave me the greatest gift as an actor because it was the point beyond which I never looked inwardly anymore. I constantly had someone else on my mind. He gave me the gift of selflessness."
"Nightingale" also airs on Sunday and June 2, 4, 6, 9, 15 and 17.
National Geographic Channel has scored in the top percentile with a winning series titled "American Genius," and it deals with innovators and their competition who often engaged in a battle of giants. Using dramatized scripts and real footage, the series tells about the rivalry between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison, William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer.
One of the Silicon Valley geniuses was Steve Wozniak, who toiled with Jobs in a family garage on what would become Apple. He thinks there are different kinds of geniuses. "The way I was a genius, which is the ones who know how to take parts, components, building blocks that come largely from other types of scientists, materials, and the properties and use mathematics a lot and come up with things that didn't exist," says Wozniak.
"That's a type of genius that doesn't always get recognized, and the arrogant jerk is sometimes the person who could take power for it, and maybe have the ideas and see it, but (is) not the builder themselves. I go for the builder. I was not so much a theoretical scientist as a practical one." The show premieres next Monday.
Always been fascinated by film noir? If so, here's your chance to sign up for a free online course to help you penetrate more deeply into the style that represented Hollywood at its cynical best. Turner Classic Movies and Ball State University have united in the effort to explain the intricacies of the art form beginning next Monday. TCM is offering the course to run in conjunction with its "Summer of Darkness," event which features some of the classics of the genre. To register for the course, slip on over to tcm.com/summerofdarkness.
It may be a guilty pleasure for some, but Lifetime will resuscitate its "Hoarders" series on Thursday with "Hoarders: Family Secrets," all new adventures of the clutter-minded and the frantic people who want to help them. . . Kevin Reilly, president of TNT and TBS, says his networks are in for a big change. TNT will continue to offer first rate dramas but they're going to ride on the wild side, says Reilly, "which will not appeal to all of our current viewers but will be a lightning rod to attract new viewers." . . As for TBS, Reilly promises much more original programming that will be "awesomely in-your-face and effortlessly diverse live-action comedies, original animation, big unscripted ideas with attitude, late-night talk and, of course, championship sports."
(Luaine Lee is a California-based correspondent who covers entertainment for Tribune News Service.)

Popular posts from this blog

UK GENERAL ELECTIONS:Inquiry announced into memo alleging Sturgeon wants Tory election victory.

Image
Civil service instigates investigation into leaked memo from Foreign Office about supposed comments made in February Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, with David Cameron in her office at the Scottish parliament earlier this year. Photograph: WPA Pool/Getty A civil service inquiry into a leaked memo which claimed that Nicola Sturgeon privately wanted to see David Cameron remain in power after the general election has been instigated following calls from the First Minister. Ms Sturgeon described the allegation as “100% untrue” and accused Whitehall of “dirty tricks”.
Read more

Ebola Outbreak: Guinea Declares Emergency As Overall Deaths From Ebola Rise To 1,069

Image
Health workers take passengers' temperatures infrared digital laser thermometers at the Felix Houphouet Boigny international airport in Abidjan on Aug. 13, 2014. Ivory Coast on Monday banned air travellers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three countries worst-hit by the Ebola outbreak, and ordered its flagship carrier Air Cote d'Ivoire to cease flights to and from them. Reuters/Luc Gnago Guinea, one of the worst-hit West African nations in the ongoing Ebola outbreak, announced a state of emergency Wednesday. The World Health Organization, or WHO, also  said  that four new people died in Guinea between Aug. 10 and Aug. 11. The total death count in Guinea from the latest epidemic was estimated at 377 by WHO while the number of cases reported had risen to 510. Overa
Read more

Sandhurst's sheikhs: Why do so many Gulf royals receive military training in the UK? A parade outside the building at Sandhurst Continue reading the main story In today's Magazine The death list that names 5,000 victims Is this woman an apostate? Voices from a WW1 prison camp The Swiss selfie scandal Generations of foreign royals - particularly from the Middle East - have learned to be military leaders at the UK's Sandhurst officer training academy. But is that still a good idea, asks Matthew Teller. Since 1812, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, on the Surrey/Berkshire border, has been where the British Army trains its officers. It has a gruelling 44-week course testing the physical and intellectual skills of officer cadets and imbuing them with the values of the British Army. Alongside would-be British officers, Sandhurst has a tradition of drawing cadets from overseas. Many of the elite families of the Middle East have sent their sons and daughters. Perhaps the most notable was King Hussein of Jordan. Continue reading the main story Find out more Matthew Teller presents Sandhurst and the Sheikhs, a Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4, on Wednesday 27 August 2014 at 11:00 BST It will be available on iPlayer shortly after broadcast Four reigning Arab monarchs are graduates of Sandhurst and its affiliated colleges - King Abdullah of Jordan, King Hamad of Bahrain, Sheikh Tamim, Emir of Qatar, and Sultan Qaboos of Oman. Past monarchs include Sheikh Saad, Emir of Kuwait, and Sheikh Hamad, Emir of Qatar. Sandhurst's links have continued from the time when Britain was the major colonial power in the Gulf. "One thing the British were excellent at was consolidating their rule through spectacle," says Habiba Hamid, former foreign policy strategist to the rulers of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. "Pomp, ceremony, displays of military might, shock and awe - they all originate from the British military relationship." Sheikh Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa, King Abdullah, Sultan Qaboos Sandhurst alumni: King Hamad of Bahrain, King Abdullah of Jordan and Sultan Qaboos of Oman It's a place where future leaders get to know each other, says Michael Stephens, deputy director of the Royal United Services Institute, Qatar. And Sandhurst gives the UK influence in the Gulf. "The [UK] gets the kind of attention from Gulf policy elites that countries of our size, like France and others, don't get. It gives us the ability to punch above our weight. "You have people who've spent time in Britain, they have… connections to their mates, their teachers. Familiarity in politics is very beneficial in the Gulf context." "For British people who are drifting around the world, as I did as a soldier," says Brigadier Peter Sincock, former defence attache to Saudi Arabia, "you find people who were at Sandhurst and you have an immediate rapport. I think that's very helpful, for example, in the field of military sales." The Emir of Dubai Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum with his son after his Passing Out Parade at Sandhurst in 2006 Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Emir of Dubai, with his son in uniform at Sandhurst in 2006 Her Majesty The Queen's Representative His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, The Emir of Qatar inspects soldiers during the 144th Sovereign's Parade held at The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst on April 8, 2004 in Camberley, England. Some 470 Officer cadets took part of which 219 were commissioned into the British Army Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar until 2013, inspects soldiers at Sandhurst in 2004 Emotion doesn't always deliver. In 2013, despite the personal intervention of David Cameron, the UAE decided against buying the UK's Typhoon fighter jets. But elsewhere fellow feeling is paying dividends. "The Gulf monarchies have become important sources of capital," says Jane Kinninmont, deputy head of the Middle East/North Africa programme at the foreign affairs think tank Chatham House. "So you see the tallest building in London being financed by the Qataris, you see UK infrastructure and oilfield development being financed by the UAE. There's a desire - it can even seem like a desperation - to keep them onside for trade reasons." British policy in the Gulf is primarily "mercantile", says Dr Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, of the Baker Institute in Houston, Texas. Concerns over human rights and reform are secondary. The Shard at dusk The Shard was funded by Qatari investors In 2012 Sandhurst accepted a £15m donation from the UAE for a new accommodation block, named the Zayed Building after that country's founding ruler. In March 2013, Sandhurst's Mons Hall - a sports centre - was reopened as the King Hamad Hall, following a £3m donation from the monarch of Bahrain, who was educated at one of Sandhurst's affiliated colleges. The renaming proved controversial, partly because of the perceived slight towards the 1,600 British casualties at the Battle of Mons in August 1914 - and partly because of how Hamad and his government have dealt with political protest in Bahrain over the last three years. A critic might note that the third term of Sandhurst's Officer Commissioning Course covers counter-insurgency techniques and ways to manage public disorder. Since tension between Bahrain's majority Shia population and minority Sunni ruling elite boiled over in 2011, more than 80 civilians have died at the hands of the security forces, according to opposition estimates, though the government disputes the figures. Thirteen police officers have also lost their lives in the clashes. "The king has always felt that Sandhurst was a great place," says Sincock, chairman of the Bahrain Society, which promotes friendship between the UK and Bahrain. "Something like 20 of his immediate family have been there as cadets. He didn't really understand why there was such an outcry." David Cameron and King Hamad David Cameron meeting King Hamad in 2012... A protester is held back by police ... while protesters nearby opposed the Bahrain ruler's human rights record Crispin Black, a Sandhurst graduate and former instructor, says the academy should not have taken the money. "Everywhere you look there's a memorial to something, a building or a plaque that serves as a touchstone that takes you right to the heart of British military history. Calling this hall 'King Hamad Hall' ain't gonna do that." Sandhurst gave a written response to the criticism. "All donations to Sandhurst are in compliance with the UK's domestic and international legal obligations and our values as a nation. Over the years donations like this have saved the UK taxpayer a considerable amount of money." But what happens when Sandhurst's friends become enemies? In 2001, then-prime minister Tony Blair visited Damascus, marking a warming of relations between the UK and Syria. Shortly after, in 2003, Sandhurst was training officers from the Syrian armed forces. Now, of course, Syria is an international pariah. Journalist Michael Cockerell has written about Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi's time at the Army School of Education in Beaconsfield in 1966: "Three years [later], Gaddafi followed a tradition of foreign officers trained by the British Army. He made use of his newfound knowledge to seize political power in his own country." Ahmed Ali Sandhurst-trained Ahmed Ali was a key player in the Egyptian military's removal of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi That tradition persists. In the 1990s Egyptian colonel Ahmed Ali attended Sandhurst. In 2013 he was one of the key figures in the Egyptian military's removal of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, now rewarded by a post in President Sisi's inner circle of advisers. In the late 1990s there were moves by the British government under Tony Blair to end Sandhurst's training of overseas cadets. Major-General Arthur Denaro, Middle East adviser to the defence secretary and commandant at Sandhurst in the late 1990s, describes the idea as part of the "ethical foreign policy" advocated by the late Robin Cook, then-foreign secretary. Tony Blair and Robin Cook Tony Blair and Robin Cook at one point planned to end Sandhurst's training of overseas cadets The funeral of King Hussein in 1999 appears to have scuppered the plan. "Coming to that funeral were the heads of state of almost every country in the world - and our prime minister was there, Tony Blair," says Major-General Denaro. "He happened to see me talking to heads of state - the Sultan of Brunei, the Sultan of Oman, the Bahrainis, the Saudis - and he said 'How do you know all these guys?' The answer was because they went to Sandhurst." Today, Sandhurst has reportedly trained more officer cadets from the UAE than from any other country bar the UK. The May 2014 intake included 72 overseas cadets, around 40% of whom were from the Middle East. "In the future," says Maryam al-Khawaja, acting president of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, "people will look back at how much Britain messed up in the [Middle East] because they wanted to sell more Typhoon jets to Bahrain, rather than stand behind the values of human rights and democracy." "It's one thing saying we're inculcating benign values, but that's not happening," says Habiba Hamid. Sandhurst is "a relic of the colonial past. They're not [teaching] the civic values we ought to find in democratically elected leaders." line Who else went to Sandhurst? Princes William and Harry, Winston Churchill, Ian Fleming, Katie Hopkins, Antony Beevor, James Blunt, Josh Lewsey, Devon Harris (From left to right) Princes William and Harry Sir Winston Churchill Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond (but did not complete training) Katie Hopkins, reality TV star Antony Beevor, historian James Blunt, singer-songwriter Josh Lewsey, World Cup-winning England rugby player Devon Harris, member of Jamaica's first bobsleigh team line Sandhurst says that "building international relations through military exchanges and education is a key pillar of the UK's international engagement strategy". Sandhurst may be marvellous for the UK, a country where the army is subservient to government, but it is also delivering militarily-trained officers to Middle Eastern monarchies where, often, armies seem to exist to defend not the nation but the ruling family.

Image
Generations of foreign royals - particularly from the Middle East - have learned to be military leaders at the UK's Sandhurst officer training academy. But is that still a good idea, asks Matthew Teller. Since 1812, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, on the Surrey/Berkshire border, has been where the British Army trains its officers. It has a gruelling 44-week course testing the physical and intellectual skills of officer cadets and imbuing them with the values of the British Army. Alongside would-be British officers, Sandhurst has a tradition of drawing cadets from overseas. Many of the elite families of the Middle East have sent their sons and daughters. Perhaps the most notable was King Hussein of Jordan. Four reigning Arab monarchs are graduates of Sandhurst and its affiliated colleges - King Abdullah of Jordan, King Hamad of Bahrain, Sheikh Tamim, Emir of Qatar, and Sultan Qaboos of Oman. Past monarchs include Sheikh S
Read more