Robert and I

Robert Redford in "Out of Africa" (Source: here)

I have only been in one Hollywood movie and it starred Robert Redford.

The movie “Out of Africa” also starred Meryl Streep as the female lead, so I knew right away I had peaked too early.

“I’ll never beat this”, I thought and decided to put an end to my Hollywood career, right there and then.

Better to quit while you are on top.

It was the year 1984. I was living in Nairobi where “Out of Africa” was being filmed. I was in my junior year of high school and a few of us kids were heavily involved in plays and musicals.

Fooling around on and off stage with actors and musicians, including (top left to bottom right) 'Kiss Me Kate', 'Fiddler on the Roof', 'Timon of Athens', 'Guys And Dolls', 'Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead', and blowng my own trumpet with the boys (Source: own photos)

One day, an ad appeared in ‘The Standard’ newspaper asking for extras for a romantic drama based on a novel by Isak Dinesen, aka Karen Blixen. We volunteered immediately.

The ad specifically requested white extras to play the parts of colonials in the Nairobi street scene, which precedes the meeting at the Norfolk Hotel called by Lord Delamere to decide how to support the war effort against Germany.

There were also many Kenyan extras in the film, but they had been summoned in other ways. I learned later that they were paid far less than us white kids and also got worse food than us. Kenya may have been independent for 21 years at the time, but neither Universal Pictures nor the Kenyan authorities appeared to mind this obvious racism.

My brother Morten was also in the movie as well as my friend Pelle from the Swedish school plus a whole bunch of kids from other schools dotted around the city. My physical education teacher, Keith Pearson, played the part of the teacher on Karen Blixen’s farm, while a friend of mine, Rick Matthews, snake-lover and Safari Rally co-driver, also had a part. I was also friendly with the actor Kenneth Mason from my time treading the boards at Nairobi’s Phoenix Players; Kenneth played the part of the banker in the movie.

Being a busy guy, I did not have much time to socialise with Meryl and Robert in between shoots, but I nevertheless felt a close connection to Robert in particular, because only a few weeks after filming I won a Robert Redford look-alike competition at the downtown Beat House discotheque. My resemblance to Redford was poor, so it must have been my abundant acting talent that clinched it.

My Robert Redford impression (Source: own photo) 

Robert Redford passed away today. His heart was in the right place. He supported environmentalism, the rights of Native Americans, the LGBT community, and the arts. In the last few years, he became an outspoken opponent of Donald Trump’s policies, including the decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement and Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The End