NEW YORK, Sept. 18 (UPI) -- Director Kevin Macdonald admits he didn't immediately think of U.S. actor Forest Whitaker when casting the role of Idi Amin in "The Last King of Scotland."
However, the filmmaker said after hiring Whitaker, he couldn't imagine anyone else playing the former Ugandan dictator.
"I thought, originally, that there wasn't going to be anybody out there for this part," Macdonald told UPI in New York.
Macdonald said before he met Whitaker, he searched Africa and Europe for someone who fit Amin's age and body type, was willing to spend three months in Uganda and who could offer a performance that alternated between terrifying and charismatic.
"Then I looked in the U.S. and Forest was one of the people on the list for me to see and I thought, 'Well, he checks some of these boxes, but I've never seen him do anything like this' ... He's known as this sweet, gentle, reserved, internal person."
Macdonald said when he met Whitaker, the actor revealed such a deep understanding of Amin and gave such a fantastic scene reading, he had to hire him.
"It was obvious that he was going to give 150 percent of himself to this, which is what he did," Macdonald said.
