In the early 1980s, when Djimon Hounsou was in his teens, the African-born future model and actor was a homeless youth in Paris, PEOPLE reports.

Djimon Hounsou was a homeless youth in Paris

"I lived on the streets for some time – fighting for survival, searching out nothing more than my daily necessities for a meager existence," Hounsou, 44, told a U.S. Senate panel on Tuesday.

In the "wintertime, when I didn't have enough warm clothes to sustain the harsh weather outside, I was sent to a juvenile prison to spend the night. It was three or four years before I was discovered on the street by a fashion designer [Thierry Mugler] and my life started to turn around, eventually."

"I try not to talk about it," he told PEOPLE after the hearing.

"It's not something I think about every day, thank God. But it's something that oftentimes hits me again," he said, adding, "It's good to think about it sometimes, to remember where you came from."

Image WENN

By Fabien Montique posted time [ 9:31 AM]