Ger Duany was born in 1978 in what is now South Sudan. Displaced by the civil war, he was forced to find refuge in Ethiopia and Kenya and finally immigrated to the United States in 1994.
He was cast as a refugee in 2004’s I Heart Huckabees by director David O Russell, who wanted someone with first-hand experience to play the part. An accomplished basketball player, he has worked as an actor and model ever since, and is about to star alongside Reese Witherspoon, Arnold Oceng and Emmanuel Jal in The Good Lie.
The Good Lie tells the story of a group of “lost boys” – and one girl – who are orphaned and displaced by civil war in Sudan and eventually find their way to America. It mirrors your own life in many respects. What did it feel like to see your experiences on the big screen? It can be painful, you know, when you go through that kind of journey with everybody else, and you struggle a lot… But I’m glad to have done the film – it will connect with a lot of people around the world. When you look around now you see other places going through the same problems, such as Ukraine and Syria, and the one thing that human beings really share is always pain. That’s why I thought The Good Lie was perfect – not only for telling the lost boys of Sudan story, but [the story of] all refugees, or anybody that ever witnessed war and loss.
Many of the events depicted are very difficult to imagine for people who have never experienced anything remotely similar – for example, the months and months of walking with little food and water, no shoes and in extreme heat to escape danger. Yes, I walked thousands of miles – if they stretched them all out I probably walked from New York City all the way to London. Now, I think wow, I have a lot of mileage in my body. Even now I walk everywhere. I like hiking, I like walking long distance.
When I walk, I get to think, I get to meditate on my experiences; that’s a solitary journey for me while I’m in a city. But when you’re walking because you’re desperate, because you are being chased away by something, it’s another thing.
You began your acting career playing a refugee in the film I Heart Huckabees. What drew you to acting?
Acting is another form of telling stories, and I came from a background where we tell stories. But if I had my own way, maybe I would not be doing movies about war, because there would be no war.
And what about modelling? I moved to New York City, and one day I was walking around and a man asked me if he could take my photo. He gave me his card and I did a fashion spread. And ever since then I’ve been doing a lot of runway in New York City for the past nine to 10 years now, and I’ve met a lot of great people.
And that’s how my story really started to come out, because people are always asking me – hey, you’re that model guy, where are you from? And then I started to tell people my story and that’s when people realised oh, this guy really came from that terrible background and that’s how modelling and acting really brought my story out little by little.
You’ve settled in New York, haven’t you? I live in New York, but right now I reside in LA, because if there’s anything to avoid in New York it’s the cold.
I’m also writing a memoir of my life. That’s been taking a lot of my time, and I hope to share that with people once it’s finished… And life goes on.
The Good Lie did remarkably well in the Box Office.
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