The main actor of “The Gods Must Be Crazy” N!xau Toma was only paid $300

The main actor of the famous 1980 movie “The Gods Must Be Crazy” was paid just $300, though the movie made over $60 million, as it often appears online. Yes, it’s a reality, surprisingly the film became that year’s top-large foreign film and actor N!Xau Toma won international superstar status from it.

N!Xau Toma was born in the Tsumkwe region of Namibia, he was a farmer who shot to worldwide fame after appearing in the lead role of The Gods Must Be Crazy, a 1980 comedy film.

In the movie N!Xau appeared as Xixo portrayed a gentle leader of a local Khoisan tribal clan. He was also a sober bushman with a comic smile, who discovers a bottle of Coca-Cola thrown out of an airplane. He sees it as an alien object upon discovering the bottle, and it sets off into a comedy of errors.

The movie reportedly made more than $60 million, but lead actor N!xau Toma was paid only $300. Jamie Uys, South African film director who discovered the actor, says N! Xau did not know the importance of paper money at first, so he let go of his first $300 wages.

N!Xau Toma, a Namibian farmer, was a leader of the San, a tribe of South African and Namibian indigenous peoples. Before being cast into the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy, N!Xau had only limited exposure to everyday life and could not know how much money was worth.

However, he had learned the value of money by the time of the sequel movie The Gods Must Be Crazy II (1989), and demanded several hundred thousand dollars before agreeing to be recast in the movie. He insisted the money was required for his family to build a cinder-block house with electricity and a water pump for his family of three wives and their children.

The Namibian newspaper published that N!xau after his film career faded in 2000. He returned to Namibia, where he tended his livestock and became a farmer growing maize, pumpkins, and beans in the newly constructed brick home.

Unfortunately, the humorous actor N!nxau Toma was found dead near his home in Namibia in late June 2003, after reportedly went out to collect wood. He was believed to be 59 years old and the exact cause of his death was unknown. In the past, he had been suffering from tuberculosis.