Forest Whitaker may be known for playing characters with quiet, thoughtful gravitas, but when the situation calls for a more volatile character, it's time for other actors to take out their pens and notebooks. In 2006's "The Last King of Scotland," Whitaker played the real-life dictator of Uganda, Idi Amin, opposite James McAvoy in a chilling role that earned Whitaker a Best Actor in a Leading Role Academy Award in 2007.
In an interview with AALBC, Whitaker described his preparation methods for the role. "Well, I started by studying Kiswahili to learn the dialect," he said. "Then, I studied tapes, documentaries, footage, and audio cassettes of Idi Amin's speeches. And I met with his brothers, his sisters, his ministers, his generals' all kinds of people, in order to try to understand him."
As you might assume, portraying Amin wasn't easy, to the point that Whitaker said he was essentially "consumed" by the role. As such, the actor was eager to shed the dictator as soon as he'd shot his final scene. "On the very last day of shooting, I remember wanting to get the character out of me right away, as much as I could. You literally take a bath to wash him off you," Whitaker said. However, he'd put so much effort in portraying Amin that some bits and pieces lingered. "But speech patterns, and little sounds, particularly colloquial things, like the way you ask questions or might respond, were sticking with me, probably because I'd worked so hard to make it a part of my everyday way of expressing myself," the actor revealed. "It also took a little longer for me to stop talking about him in the first person."
