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Why Black ‘Lost’ Actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje Became a Skinhead

Known for his roles in “Lost” and “Oz,” Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje is now telling a far more important story — his own. The actor is making a film entitled “Farming” about the practice followed by many Nigerian parents in 1960s and ’70s Britain of having children informally fostered. Akinnuoye-Agbaje, 44, was raised in such a situation, making for a fascinating life story, which included the shocking revelation that he became a skinhead as a teenager in an attempt to fit in.

When he was six weeks old, his parents – a Nigerian couple studying in London – gave him to a white working-class couple in Essex, he says in a new interview with The Guardian. He lived in his foster home with more than 10 other African children, including his two sisters. The climate at the time was such that he grew up fearful of being physically attacked because of his skin color. And although he was black, Akinnuoye-Agbaje thought of himself as white and developed a fear of his own race. So much so that when he occasionally saw black sailors in his town, which had a naval dockyard, he would run away from them. “I just remember being petrified,” he said. “It was as if they were the bogey man to us. Fish and chips and corned beef, that’s what I knew.” (more…)