Actor. N!xau was an actor who was born in what was remote South West Africa in about 1944. He did not know his true date of birth, and his birth name was G!kau but a typo changed it. He had no formal education and was not familiar with other cultures, yet he spoke at least three languages. In the English language, the exclamation mark substitutes for the clicking sound in his native tongue of Ungwatsi. N!xau was a Khoisan bushman, who gained fame when he appeared in the lead role of the 1980 film, "The Gods Must Be Crazy," the story told of a bushman named "Xixo" who found an empty glass coke bottle after it was dropped from an airplane from overhead. The story's plot explains how "Xixo," who was not familiar in his world with the foreign Coke bottle, traveled to "the ends of the earth to throw it off." The film made over $500 million. In 1989, he was asked to appear again in the role of "Xixo" in the sequel film, "The Gods Must Be Crazy II," and after being paid a few hundred dollars for the first film, he accepted the role on the condition he be paid 800,000 South African Rand or nearly $500,000 in advance to purchase or his family, which included three wives, four daughters, and two sons, a cinder block house with electricity, a water pump and a used car. He never learned to drive the car. He also appeared in the less successful films of "Crazy Safari" in 1991, "Crazy Hong Kong" and "In Darkest Hollywood: Cinema And Apartheid" both in 1993, "The Gods Must Be Funny In China" in 1994 and his last film, "Journey to Nyae Nyae," which was released posthumously in 2004. While on a hunting trip alone, he died in early July of 2003, and after being reported missing, his body was found four days later. He had been diagnosed some time earlier with debilitating multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. At his death, his age was estimated to be 58 or 59 years.