Kate’s playing mum in tough boyhood tale
FoR more than a decade the actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje has been telling me stories about his hardscrabble upbringing with white foster parents in Tilbury.
He was born in Islington to Nigerian parents in 1967, but at six weeks old was ‘farmed’ out to a white, working-class couple and raised with other children in care until he was 16.
Growing up, he had to cope with local kids hurling racist abuse at him. His foster father, a lorry driver, told him to stand up for himself.
‘The local skinheads beat me up, but I beat them back.
‘After several encounters they were amused by me and took me in as a brutalised pet.
‘By the time I was 16 I was a formidable member of that gang,’ said Adewale, who is known as Mr Eko from the TV drama Lost, and for roles in Thor and forthcoming TV drama The Fix.
The actor has fictionalised his upbringing and written and directed a film called Farming, which is being shown at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday.
Damson Idris plays the teenage boy struggling to discover who he is, and Kate Beckinsale — in one of her best roles — plays the woman who, in her own way, raises him.
Adewale said his foster parents often made racist remarks, but they were made against a backdrop of Love Thy Neighbour and watching Alf Garnett on television.
‘Coon and sambo was the fabric wallpaper. My foster parents had not been exposed to African culture. They didn’t know any better.’ As harsh as it was, he got the best street education and later went on to study law.
Adewale said he was bowled over by working with Beckinsale and we agreed that she’s the ‘ fractured, flawed hero’ of the story, which also stars John Dagleish and Gugu Mbatha-Raw.