#ABDUWALI MUSE REAL LIFE DRIVER#
#ABDUWALI MUSE REAL LIFE TV#

Greengrass purposely kept the two apart before their first scene in order to harness the real-life dynamic. Despite Hanks being a mentor of sorts to his co-star – 'He tells me, career-wise, just use it wisely and work your hardest' – Abdi spends the film engaged in battle with the Hollywood heavyweight, both in terms of the story and screen presence.

When he got there he doesn't want to mess up, he doesn't want to celebrate early.' That wasn't the only convenient parallel. ' was feeling exactly the same way as I was feeling. One bonus of his on-set anxiety was that Abdi could feed it back into the fragile resolve of his character. He told me: 'Don't think about the whole movie, just think about today.'' I remember on the first day, I was so nervous. It was Greengrass, the British film-maker behind United 93 and The Bourne Supremacy, who both guided and relied heavily on Abdi during the Captain Phillips shoot, with the nuances in the novice's acting carrying much of the story. 'When you work with a great director you realise you are far from being a director.' 'I was working on my own film, too, but it never worked out,' he says sheepishly. But Abdi wasn't a complete newcomer to the film-making process, previously jobbing as a director on Somali hip-hop videos.

#ABDUWALI MUSE REAL LIFE DRIVER#

Much has been made of Somali-born Abdi's previous life as a limousine driver in Minneapolis, where his family settled when he was a teenager his story touted as that of the most unlikely zero-to-hero American dreamer. We loved acting and we really wanted to get this.' 'We auditioned together, we went home and we practised. Three of his friends were cast as his cronies. 'They asked me easy questions – 'What's your name? 'Where were you born?' – and they assigned me to a character and gave me a script.' After the open audition, targeted at Minneapolis's sizeable Somali community, Abdi's quietly authoritative presence won him the role of Muse, the pirate ringleader who wrangles with Tom Hanks's Phillips for control over the hefty American cargo ship. He's managing to look only vaguely weary despite recounting the inauspicious beginnings to his success story for what must be the millionth time.

#ABDUWALI MUSE REAL LIFE TV#

'There was an open casting call on TV and I went,' says Abdi.

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