Blondy Baruti - The Incredible True Story of Blondy Baruti: My Unlikely Journey from the Congo to Hollywood

Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.

We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.

Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2018 by Blondy Baruti

Certain names and characteristics have been changed.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition May 2018

SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or .

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

Interior design by Silverglass Design

Jacket design by Daniel Rembert

Back Jacket photographs Courtesy of the author

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Names: Baruti, Blondy.

Title: The incredible true story of Blondy Baruti : my unlikely journey from

the Congo to Hollywood / Blondy Baruti ; with Joe Layden.

Description: First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition. | New York :

Simon & Schuster, 2018.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017057729| ISBN 9781501164996 (hardback) | ISBN 9781501165009

(trade paper) | ISBN 9781501165016 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Baruti, Blondy. | Motion picture actors and actressesUnited States

Biography. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs.

Classification: LCC PN2287.B3755 A3 2018 | DDC 791.4302/8092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017057729

ISBN 978-1-5011-6499-6

ISBN 978-1-5011-6501-6 (ebook)

This book is dedicated to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and to my hero: my mother, Annie Baruti, who protected me and never left my side while going through some of the worst moments of my life.

And you may ask yourself... How did I get here? Talking Heads

APRIL 19, 2017

HOLLYWOOD

D id you know that the red carpet is not always red? Sometimes, like tonight, at the Dolby Theatre, it is purple. I had no idea! Then again, I had never attended a world premiere of a Hollywood movie. Not even as a spectator. So please forgive both my ignorance and enchantment; this is all a bit overwhelming.

Lights are flashing, stars are dazzling as the crowd outside the theater gasps and applauds at the seemingly endless parade of limousines that stretches before the theater, disgorging one celebrity after another. Chris Pratt, Sylvester Stallone, Vin Diesel, Kurt Russell and his partner, Goldie Hawn, just to name a few. They are all here to celebrate the premiere of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 , the latest blockbuster in the Marvel Comics cinema franchise. And I am here with them, as part of the team, which in itself is something of a miracle.

As with all Marvel movies, the production was shrouded in secrecy and heavily laden with special effects, and I have yet to see a final print. So I do not even know how much screen time will be devoted to my character, a villain named Huhtar. Frankly, it does not matter in the least. It is enough to have earned a role in one of the years biggest movies; it is, in fact, more than enough. As the movie unspools for the audience and I get the first glimpse of Huhtar, I must stifle the urge to shout, but I hear it in my head.

I made the cut!

Yes, that is me up on the screen. Blondy Baruti.

A 6-FOOT-8 FORMER REFUGEE from the Democratic Republic of the Congo; a basketball-player-turned-actor whose life story is only marginally less fantastic than a Marvel film. Not only shouldnt I be here, in Hollywood, I shouldnt be anywhere at all. I could have died many times overas a child living in poverty in the Congo, or especially as a young boy fleeing the violence of a nation ravaged by war on a harrowing five-hundred-mile odyssey for survival.

Imprinted on my brain are images impossible to erase, and memories I cannot shake, and do not want to shake, for they have shaped me into the man I am today, a man of unwavering faith and hope. I will carry scars for the rest of my days, residual damage from the sheer volume of violence I encountered; the odor of death that burns the nostrils and seeps into your lungs; the screeching of machetes and unmistakable cocking of AK-47 rifles; the whistling of bullets as they cut through the jungle. My God, the savageness of it all. I can still feel the driving rainonly in the tropics is it so ceaseless and loud, and hear the harsh rustling of wind through the tall mahogany trees, a sound I could never differentiate from the sound of soldiers walking through the high grass.

Is it a clich to say that children are resilient? I dont believe so. I believe it is true in the most fundamental sense of the word. What the boy lacks in physical strengthin size and musculaturehe compensates for with a purity of spirit, and the blessedness of navet. Surrounded by cruelty and violence, the child is still capable of happiness and love. He can smell the rotting flesh all around him; he can hear the anguished cries of his mother; he can suffer for days on end with dysentery and fever, and emerge from it with a smile and an eagerness to play with his friends as if he doesnt have a care in the world.

Even when surrounded by death and confronted daily by the inescapable reality of the depths to which mankind can sink, the boy remains filled with life and light, his heart capable of feeling goodness and optimism in even the bleakest of situations.

Sometimes, the memories of the ordeals of my childhood come back to me at the strangest of times: not just in the early morning fog of a terrifyingly vivid dream, but when I least expect it. The hot, sticky smell that follows a summer rain will fill my nostrils, and suddenly I am back in the jungle, crawling on all fours, listening to my mothers urgent whisper:

Keep down, Blondy. Stay low. Stay quiet. They are close.

A car that backfires or a firecracker tossed casually on the Fourth of Julya joyous holiday that reminds me of the great fortune I have to now call America my homecan easily trigger an episode of post-traumatic stress, and I have to fight the urge to drop to the ground and seek cover from the crackling gunfire. In that moment, I am catapulted back in time. I can feel the jungle all around me. I can hear the cries of friends and loved ones. I can sense the danger deep in my marrow; it feels almost more real now than it did then.