Vitalii Sediuk interviews Barkhad Adbi and asks how the very first breakthrough role brought him fame and money and if it changed him.

Somali-born actor had been directing hip-hop videos before responding to a casting call, though his relative inexperience did feed into his portrayal of a desperate pirate in Captain Phillips. Until recently, Barkhad Abdi was doing shifts at his brother's Minnesota mobile-phone shop. Now the 28-year-old has acting plaudits coming out of his ears thanks to his turn as khat-chomping rookie pirate Muse in Captain Phillips, Paul Greengrass's retelling of the real-life 2009 hijack of the Maersk Alabama off the Somali coast. When we meet, he's just snatched the London Critics' Circle supporting actor gong from the jaws of Jared Leto and Michael Fassbender and, two weeks later, he scoops the same award at the Baftas.

But it's his Oscars nod that's proving most difficult to digest. "It is surreal, I would say," muses Abdi, sitting in his room at the hotel that hosted last night's ceremony, wearing an oversized suit and Nikes. "That was the one show that I used to watch." If he's victorious at the Hollywood backslap this weekend, it will be a historic win; for what makes his rapid rise all the more remarkable is that Captain Phillips is Abdi's acting debut.

Info: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/...