The Starsky & Hutch star travelled to the island to work on his documentary about restoring the famed U.S. writer's car, and the piece morphed into a film about modern-day Cuba.

Soul is still seeking funding to finish the project, and he has revealed it was a lifelong ambition of his to visit the nation since reading Hemingway's classic The Old Man and the Sea in his youth.

In an interview on his official website, the actor says, "I was first introduced to Ernest Hemingway as a child. My American literature teacher gave the class The Old Man and the Sea, and there were a few stories that I remember as a child which so captured my imagination that I was 'in' that book, you know?

"It's one of those experiences, and part of that was this dream of coming to the place where that story is told. I wasn't sure where Cuba was. I probably ran to a map to try to find it, you know?"