Hondo was born in 1935 in
Atar. His mother was Mauritanian and his father
Senegalese. In 1954, Hondo went to
Rabat,
Morocco, to train to become a chef at the International Hotel School there. He emigrated to France in 1959 and found work first in
Marseille and then in
Paris, variously as a cook, farm labourer, waiter, dockworker and delivery man. He began to take classes in acting and directing, and studied under French actress
Françoise Rosay, acting in classic plays by
Shakespeare,
Molière and
Racine. In the late 1960s, Hondo started taking small acting roles in television and films. As he learned the craft of film making by careful observation of the work of others, he began to get work behind the camera. Made on a $30,000 budget, it was financed by Hondo's work
dubbing American films into
French.
Soleil O played during International Critics' Week at the
1970 Cannes Film Festival, where it received critical acclaim.
Soleil O received a
Golden Leopard award at the 1970
Locarno International Film Festival. In 1981, Hondo was a member of the jury at the
12th Moscow International Film Festival. Hondo also worked frequently as a
voice actor. He worked on the dubbing of many English-language films into French, voicing characters played on screen by
Sidney Poitier,
Morgan Freeman,
Ben Kingsley and
Danny Glover (on the rare occasions when Glover was not dubbed by
Richard Darbois). Med Hondo explained on his website that he met with Danny Glover in 1991 and presented his then-current project to him: a
biopic of
Haitian
revolutionary Toussaint Louverture. According to Hondo, an enthusiastic Glover voiced his interest in the lead role, and in taking part in the production side of the film, but then cut all communication with Hondo and co-writer Claude Veillot. Hondo claimed that Glover's own
Louverture biopic project, financially backed by
Hugo Chavez, was inspired by his original screenplay, and addressed an open letter to Glover in which he denied assertions from Glover's "Louverture Films" company that the script was a commission paid by Glover to Hondo. Hondo also mentioned his meeting with Glover in an English-language interview on French international news channel
France 24. Hondo died in Paris on 2 March 2019, aged 83. ==Filmography==