John Boyega feared he'd die during disastrous boat trip

John Boyega has recounted being in fear for his life after the captain of a boat he was on off the Nigerian coast demanded money and threatened to strand him at sea.

The 28-year-old, whose parents are of Nigerian descent, was filming a screen adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel Half Of A Yellow Sun back in 2012 when he boarded the wrong vessel following a trip to a specialist doctor after an on-set accident.

The trip went from bad to worse, however, when its captain cut the boat's motors in pouring rain and demanded money to continue - with Boyega refusing to pay extra even though he feared for his life.

"I felt very fearful," he recalled in an interview with GQ magazine.

He continued: "But I think it was the first time that I went into fight-or-flight mode and was just like, 'OK, well, both of us are going to die today, then, because I'm definitely not going to back down'."

Boyega told the captain he would pay him only what was owed and added: '"we'll both be dying in the sea here if you think I'm going out like this or that you can get more from me."

Luckily for the Star Wars actor, production staff had sent local police out to find him, and a patrol boat manned by AK-47-toting cops rescued the star.

Boyega hasn't let the incident put him off his parents' homeland. He's recently inked a deal with Netflix to pursue film and TV projects in Africa - with two of the first three projects coming from Nigeria.