Here’s a sampling of what he probably had to learn. “Ja” mean “yeah.” “Are you coming with” is said rather than “Are you coming with us?” “Ja well, no fine,” means “Things are okay,” and “Hey bru. You know who I am,” is said instead of “Excuse me. But what do you think you’re doing?” “Just now”  loosely translates to any time later on and is different from “now now,” which means “right now” or “immediately.” Other idiomatic phrases include adding a “hey?” at the end of a sentence as in “Are you well, hey?”

According to Dickson, had Leo made a slip of the tongue, so to speak, the cantankerous South Afrikaans would have even quick to hear it. Of course, it also helped that Leo was surrounded by the accent being spoken onset on a day-to-day basis.

Of the film's revelations about conflict diamonds and child soldiers, Ngila says, “Everyone who worked on the film was very passionate about it. And it wouldn’t hurt Hollywood to de-bling for a while.”

On the the diamond industry's initial objections to the film's depiction of a past illicit trade in conflict stones, ”I’ve seen lots of ads, even several pages in Vanity Fair, about how the diamond companies are helping Africa, but it’s good for people to see this film and find out the history and the other side of the issue.”

Photo Credits: Leo and his "Blood Diamond" costars at the New York premiere.
Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage