A Quote by Nigel Hawthorne
I really ran away in 1951 from South Africa, where I lived with my mother and father - who was a doctor - to come back to England to find myself, then hide what I found.
Related Quotes
I found there's a fairly blatant racism in America that's already there, and I don't think I noticed it when I lived here as a kid. But when I went back to South Africa, and then it's sort of thrust in your face, and then came back here - I just see it everywhere.
My maternal family are South African and when I was small and my parents separated my mother and I went back to South Africa. So for me the emergence of my own childhood consciousness was in the context of 1970s and 1980s apartheid South Africa and the movement there.
I was born in South Africa during apartheid, a system of laws that made it illegal for people to mix in South Africa. And this was obviously awkward because I grew up in a mixed family. My mother's a black woman, South African Xhosa woman... and my father's Swiss, from Switzerland.
I was lucky to come along for the ride. [My mother] really is an amazing woman. And the world we lived in in South Africa at the time was a very matriarchal society because so many black men had been removed from the home.
My father ran an insurance company, but he passed away when I was 8. My mother was an economist working for the government of Liberia. But both my grandmothers were entrepreneurs in rural West Africa.
From the age of 17, I lived the life of a hermit and dedicated myself to gym life, first in the South Bronx and then back in England. I was in a bubble and I bypassed a lot of popular culture.
My father was really good with math. It's a funny thing, I don't remember my father or my mother being so mechanical-minded. My father always wanted to be a doctor, but he came from a really poor family in Georgia, and there was no way he was going to be a doctor.
My agents were like "Come to L.A., we've got meetings for you." I was like "No, I'm doing this now." Then my father became very ill back in England, and I didn't want to be away. I went back to England and did a bunch of crazy indie movies, all of which I loved with a passion, and none of which did any business.
South Africa gives me a perspective of what's real and what's not real. So I go back to South Africa to both lose myself and gain awareness of myself. Every time I go back, it doesn't take long for me to get caught into a very different thing. A very different sense of myself.
When President Mbeki said, if you get AIDS, you can have a shower and it goes away. It's like, oh, come on. Or it's caused by poverty. We faced those kind of issues. But now, with the new regime, they have really woken up, paid attention. And when South Africa speaks, then the whole of Africa will listen. And I have got great hopes for that.
When I was in government, the South African economy was growing at 4.5% - 5%. But then came the global financial crisis of 2008/2009, and so the global economy shrunk. That hit South Africa very hard, because then the export markets shrunk, and that includes China, which has become one of the main trade partners with South Africa. Also, the slowdown in the Chinese economy affected South Africa. The result was that during that whole period, South Africa lost something like a million jobs because of external factors.
There is a core of loneliness. It's partly existential. Secondly, I was raised a loner. My parents were not there. My father was asked to leave because he couldn't metabolize ethanol. Actually, my mother ran away with us when I was 2 months old and my brother was 5. Real dramatic stuff: down the fire escape, through backyards. So, I sort of raised myself. I was alone a lot and I invented myself - I lived through the radio and through my imagination.
And now South Africa has finally woken up and it is doing great things. And if South Africa becomes the template to what AIDS is in the sub-Saharan continent, then all the other countries are going to follow suit. And Michel Sidibe, who spoke at the breakfast meeting this morning, was saying that there is so much hope for Africa now that South Africa has got its house in order.
After I came out to my mother at 17, I ran away from home and lived with a friend. We come from a highly religious family, and she could not accept it. It was devastating, and I was depressed.
My father is a doctor and my mother ran the local pharmacy. Growing up, I saw firsthand the difference they made to our community.
Living here in North America - I have been Americanized. When I go back home now, there are things that I have far less tolerance for in South Africa. We've come such a long way in terms of race relations and the economy as well as people's willingness to move on. There are still a lot of things that are frustrating about being in South Africa.
Related Authors
Arnold Schwarzenegger Quotes
Austrian
Actor
Benedict Cumberbatch Quotes
English
Actor
Bruce Lee Quotes
American
Actor
Clint Eastwood Quotes
American
Actor
Daniel Radcliffe Quotes
British
Actor
Dwayne Johnson Quotes
American
Actor
Jeff Bridges Quotes
American
Actor
Johnny Depp Quotes
American
Actor
Kevin Hart Quotes
American
Actor
Kevin Spacey Quotes
American
Actor
Leonardo DiCaprio Quotes
American
Actor
Rob Lowe Quotes
American
Actor
Robert Pattinson Quotes
English
Actor
Sylvester Stallone Quotes
American
Actor
Will Rogers Quotes
American
Actor
Zach Braff Quotes
American
Actor