11th grade. Unit 3. Lesson 1. What does Angelina Jolie see in this man?

Read the article about a famous environmentalist. Complete it with the correct forms of the words from the box.

qualifications (*2), strength, extinct, career, to follow in someone’s footsteps, hands-on, valuable(*2), rewarding, workload, to be an influence, achieve, passion, conservation, weakness, role model, challenging, environment, purpose.

Angelina Jolie is planning to make a film about Richard Leakey - a 69-year-old Kenyan paleontologist, conservationist and politician. He is the son of famous anthropologist Louis and Mary Leakey. His life has been a stormy mixture of successes and failures but he has managed to become a major African figure. No other white man has (1) such success in Africa. Though, Leakey doesn’t regard himself as a white man. “I’m African. If I could change my race by taking a pill, I’d be very happy to do it,”he says.
What is so special about him? He has had two kidney transplants, one liver transplant and has lost both his legs. Leakey USA workaholic. He’s not very welcoming or polite, but he likes talking about the things he holds dear to his heart: (2) and Kenya. These two (3) of his and getting up at 4.30 every morning are at the heart of his success. He hasn’t got the necessary academic (4) . It’s both his (5) and his (6) . He manages to come up with unconventional solutions to serious problems, but sometimes scientists do not take him seriously. Nevertheless, he has been a (7) for different people, ranging from the British Royal family( Prince Charles and Prince William are among his admirers) through Hollywood film stars and pop stars to the billionaire masters of the universe who invest in his ambitious projects.
Richard and his brothers had a very active childhood. They went horse-riding, played games with animals. Family games included driving lions away from a kill, as our ancestors did. At school children bullied him for his racial equality ideas.
He had a lot of (8) experience assisting his parents with their archaelogical excavations. He made his first (9) finding when he was only six - it was a fossil belonging to an (10) species of a giant pig. Although he left school at 16 with poor (11) - he has a restless energy and intellectual curiosity, all of which may explain his next (12) moves, from running Kenya’s Natural History Museum to taking over the wildlife service. His work as the head of the Kenya Wildlife Service was (13) but (14) - he managed to save hundreds of African elephants. In the 1970s he became world famous for burning a huge pile of ivory worth thousands of dollars. His (15) was to show that it should only be (16) on a live elephant.
Now he’s planning to create a massive science park at Lake Turkana that will tell the story of humankind and will have been completed in 20 or 30 years. The second project is connected with building a highway through the middle of the Serengeti National Park. While most international conservationists have been opposing it, Leakey is supporting the idea.
Despite his age, his (17) is stiil increasing . He organised a political party - Safina, which means Noah's Ark in Swahili, he won a seat in his country's parliament and he (18) in the country's politics. In 2015 he returned to the Kenya Wildlife Service as chairman to continue his lifelong service to the (19) and to the continent that gave birth to the human race.
His daughter (20) . She has got academic qualifications in geology zoology and in 2001 she received a doctor's degree in paleontology.
Judging from his life story, we can presume Richard Leakey will want to live long enough to see Brad Pitt play him in the new film. Curiously, he says, "I don't need the film, but the elephants do".