STRIPPED and beaten by skinheads, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje had a tough and terrifying upbringing in late Seventies Britain.
A black British teenager in a country in the grip of ethnic unrest, Adewale was a target for white nationalists.
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In one particularly ferocious attack in his Essex home town, he was savaged by dogs.
Adewale recalls: “I remember having to walk in my underpants. They made my life hell. I remember having dogs set on me.
“I still have scars on the back of my leg from the Alsatian.”
Yet Adewale — who became an actor and starred in Suicide Squad — turned the tables on his tormentors in a way you wouldn’t expect . . . he joined them.
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After learning to stand his ground, he ended up fighting alongside his racist attackers in a skinhead gang.
This is just one incredible incident in the fascinating life story of the actor, which has inspired Adewale’s autobiographical movie Farming.
He has written and directed the film, which stars Damson Idris, Kate Beckinsale and Jaime Winstone, and is a hard-hitting drama which tells of the actor’s troubled youth in Tilbury through main character Enitan.
Born in Islington, North London, to Nigerian parents, Adewale was “farmed” out to a white couple as a baby — and they were racists.
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His dad Baronet came to England to study law and mum Sikirat accountancy. Feeling they couldn’t focus with a child in tow, they paid for Adewale to live with a family in Essex.
The actor recalls: “I felt my mum rejected me. But I was only six weeks old when I was passed on. As a child, those were my parents.
“Where the rejection came was living in a house of eight to nine children, with rotating foster children.”
It was not uncommon at the time for Nigerians to send children to live with a relative or a stranger to provide a better start in life. The system of “farming” black kids out to white parents was done outside official channels.
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Adewale, 52, explains: “It was below the radar because many of the Nigerian parents were fostering their children with working class families who were not going to be subject to red tape.”
The racist language used by Beckinsale as the foster mum in the film was all too real for the young Adewale. His foster dad, a lorry driver, told him to defend himself when kids attacked him for the colour of his skin.
He recalls: “I never recall getting a hug. We focused on survival. One of my earliest memories is my foster mother telling me she didn’t like me.”
When he was eight years old, his birth parents took him to live with them in Nigeria because they were worried about his upbringing in England.
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But the actor had spent his whole life among British people and felt out of place in an African village. He says: “In school I was ridiculed as a foreigner. I couldn’t speak the language and got beaten to make me speak.”
Realising Adewale was unhappy in Nigeria, his biological parents sent him back to his foster parents in Essex, where he span out of control from the age of 13.
This was the late Seventies when the National Front was on the rise, propelled by gangs of racist skinheads. Adewale found himself a target for vicious beatings. The skinheads “ran the town”, so Adewale thought it was best to join them. Heavily built and uncompromising, he proved to his enemies it might be good to have him on their side.
He explains: “I wanted belonging in a town where I was told I didn’t belong. My father told me to stand up for myself. When I got proficient at that it got me a certain reputation.”
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This led to the youngster regularly getting in trouble for shoplifting or fighting.
When his Nigerian parents learned of this, they decided to get him away from the corrupting environment — and he was put in a private school in Surrey, where no one could understand his “Cockney” accent.
There, aged 16 and a half, he hit a low and attempted to take his own life.
He recounts: “It was the depths of my despair. I tried to put a noose round me and it didn’t work.”
With the help of social workers he rebuilt his life and went on to qualify as a lawyer, before being spotted by a talent scout and becoming a model. From there he won roles in films including The Bourne Identity, GI Joe, Thor: The Dark World and in 2016 played Killer Croc in Suicide Squad.
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Now Adewale, who shares his time between London and Los Angeles, looks set for success behind the camera with Farming.
He says of his film: “It’s about the importance of maternal love, which is broken when the child is passed to another mother, the search for that love, the impact of the lack of it.”
- Farming opens in cinemas on Friday.
