“You don’t have to believe in what I believe, but you have to believe in something.”
Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker opens up about his journey as an activist after receiving an honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
#Cannes2022
Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker opens up about his journey as an activist after receiving an honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
#Cannes2022
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Short filmTranscript
00:00We should know that our actions can, like, resonate and make things change.
00:19While filming The Last King of Scotland in Uganda,
00:22you were taken to a school for orphans where you met former child soldiers.
00:27The story of one boy in particular stuck with you. Could you share it with us?
00:33Well, I mean, Simon, I mean, he was a child soldier from, like, gunfire blasts. He lost
00:41most of his hearing in one year. He couldn't really stay alone in a room by himself, you know.
00:48Too much isolation for his mind to have to listen to his own thoughts,
00:53you know, so he would always be in groups and slowly, slowly we would continue to work with
00:57them and ultimately today he, like, has his own electronics store. He has a school that he trains
01:05other youths and he went through all these different struggles and yet he's able to, like,
01:11succeed. He's a very successful businessman, you know what I mean? It's possible from being
01:17a child soldier who was abducted to, like, running your own store and training other kids to be able
01:22to succeed. When I started my organization, the Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative,
01:32that was about, that was 10 years ago. We were really inward facing and I made a choice of,
01:37like, just working on what we were doing, not dealing with publicity or dealing with trying
01:41to amplify our voices out, but just, like, to resonate in. There's a lot of need on the planet,
01:45you know, for conflict resolution and development and entrepreneurship training. Each one of us is
01:51capable of making a massive change occur and sometimes we need to understand that every little,
01:57I think Desmond Tutu talks about it, every little, you put all these little pieces of good together
02:02and these little pieces of good can overwhelm the world. That form of empathy that is me seeing
02:08myself in you and knowing your cells contain me is really something that works in conflict
02:14resolution too. To be able to find a commonality, which I see wholly, we are one as one entity,
02:21one being. The planet Earth is an organism itself even, you know, and us being a part of it and we
02:28shouldn't act like we're not connected because we are. My process as an actor is to try to,
02:32like, take away the layers of what experiences people have and, like, find a link between us.
02:38Acting has allowed me to search for the core of who I am as a person and find a light in each
02:43character to which I play and connect to. Acting has also expanded my awareness of the world and
02:50guided me to work as a Special Envoy for Peace and Reconciliation at UNESCO to found the Whitaker
02:56Peace and Development Initiative. I've got to be honest, I never even knew that these kind of
02:59places existed when I was a kid, you know, and I didn't know anything about a film festival or
03:06or even making a movie. It seemed too far-fetched. I had no concept of this kind of a life, you know,
03:14and also, like, no concept of, like, the rest of the world. I hadn't explored it, I hadn't seen it,
03:20I didn't know it. What do you think your mother, Laura, would tell you today? I think she'd
03:25tell me the same thing she told me then, which is, you know, she said, you don't have to believe in
03:30what I believe, but you have to believe in something, and I think that's been a big credo
03:34for me, you know. You have to take responsibility and care. Like, you can't, like, just idly walk
03:40by, you know. Life isn't meant for that. The energy of the universe is not trying to claim
03:46that, it's trying to claim you being a part of something greater.
03:55you