People
Bolaji Badejo
Acting · follow into films and chains
Biography
Bolaji Badejo was a Nigerian design student who portrayed the eponymous Alien in the 1979 film Alien. Alien was Badejo's only acting appearance. As a child, Badejo had been diagnosed with sickle cell anaemia. Several months after his 39th birthday, Bolaji fell ill and was taken to St. Stephen Hospital in Ebute Metta, Lagos, where he died on December 22, 1992 of complications from the disease. While at a bar in early 1977, Bolaji Badejo was approached by Alien casting director Peter Archer, who was scouting for someone suitably tall and thin to play the eponymous Alien. Ivor Powell, the film's associate producer, explained that "The person that put the suit on had to be impossibly tall. We wanted them to be incredibly long-limbed, especially from the waist to the knee." However, the production had reached an impasse casting their Alien. They tried various female models, a family of contortionists and even Chewbacca actor Peter Mayhew.
Notable films
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Highlights from credits and KinoChain journeys.
Chains
KinoChain journeys
Public chains that pass through their films — or name them as a bridge.
When Studios Marry: Films Born of Corporate Chaos
From the ashes of mergers and acquisitions come some of cinema's most fascinating experiments. This chain traces how boardroom decisions shaped the art on scree...
8 films
The Art of Listening
From the whisper of a surveillance tape to the roar of a wartime beach, these eight films prove that sound is not just heard, it is felt. A chain of masterpiece...
7 films
From External Beast to Internal Trauma
Here is a five-film narrative chain that traces how the monster evolved from an exotic physical threat into a psychological mirror of society.
5 films
20 Home Video Releases Every Film Obsessive Should Own
There was a brief, glorious period in the late 1990s and early 2000s when buying a film on home video felt less like acquiring a product and more like being han...
20 films
The DVDs That Changed Everything
In the late 1990s, home video underwent a seismic shift driven by a double revolution: an unprecedented jump in technical quality, and an unprecedented access t...
10 films
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