not crazy about this outfit but she has her own style. I like the hair and makeup. Will be interested to see what she wears to the Oscars.Attending the 89th Annual Academy Awards Nominee Luncheon on February 6, 2017 in Beverly Hills, California.
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Ruth Negga
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Oscars: 'Loving' Star Ruth Negga Calls Film "A Sad Mirror" of America Today
By Natalie Jarvey
The actress scored the biopic's only nomination for her portrayal of Mildred Loving, who along with her husband helped to overturn several state bans on interracial marriage.
If moviegoing audiences weren't yet familiar with Ruth Negga, that changed Jan. 8 when Meryl Streep name-checked the Ethiopian-Irish actress during her much-discussed Golden Globes speech celebrating the diversity of Hollywood. "If I was at home, I would have jumped up and down and started screaming," laughs Negga, 35, who on Jan. 24 found herself with something else to celebrate when her name was announced among the Oscar nominees for best actress. She's being recognized for her portrayal of Mildred Loving in Jeff Nichols' Loving, about the couple behind the Supreme Court's landmark 1967 ruling on interracial marriage. The first-time nominee spoke with THR about her personal connection to the story, how the real Mildred (who died in 2008) might have felt about the film and why she's bringing peanuts to the Oscars.
What drew you to the story of Mildred and Richard Loving?
There's so many different reasons. You feel such empathy for this couple and what they went through. That resonates with me, and I think with any genuine human being — but also, I suppose, because I'm mixed race, although I had a very different history, personally, from what they went through, and the country that I come from has a very different history from America. I like being part of unearthing previously untold stories, bringing more and more attention to this couple. Their love for each other was such a tender, good thing. I think that's what people have responded to.
How did you and Nichols approach your performance?
We realized that our main priority was them as a couple. There is a velocity of their journey that was very important for us to show. We all just kind of wanted to strip it down and not really add anything superfluous.
Why was it important that Loving not turn into a big courtroom drama?
It wouldn't have been true to this couple. It would have been about the lawyers and the case instead of about these sweet human beings who were in love and just wanted to be together and live together and raise their family wherever they chose.
How do you think the real Mildred would have reacted to the film?
I've gathered she would be very shy of any press attention. That wasn't something she enjoyed. I would love for her to take away from this film the feeling that her efforts have been acknowledged, that they have been celebrated and that this is a sort of "thank you" from lots of people.
Has the reaction to the film been different since the election of Donald *****?
I think so. But what a serendipitous time for it to come out. I mean, in a good way. People legislating on other people's lives, encroaching on other people's lives, [the film] really feels like a sad mirror in a way to the present situation. But on the flip side, it's maybe a little bit of a solution to something because our film contains so many instances where compassion and empathy are key.
What was your most challenging scene?
Some of the things that we've taken from the documentary with the filmmaker coming in, that was quite nerve-racking because I did want to find some sort of visual accuracy and also an emotional accuracy, too. So that was a bit of a balancing act.
Have you received any advice about how to make it through your first Oscars night?
People have just been like, "Enjoy it. You know, this is your once-in-a-lifetime kind of chance. Drink it up, really just enjoy it and bring peanuts for snacks."
How did you feel when Meryl Streep called you out in her Golden Globes speech?
How would you feel if Meryl Streep said your name out loud? That's exactly how I felt. Astonished. Super flattered. I don't have any words to describe those emotions that were going on underneath. If I was at home, I might have jumped up and down and started screaming. I didn't think that was appropriate. To be honest, it wasn't about me, the speech. And to be there in the room, you could hear a pin drop. The hairs on my arm went up because it was so elegant, it was so truthful, and I think she was able to articulate what many, many of us felt — what many people feel — in such a beautiful way. How lucky I was to have been present. How lucky.
Source
By Natalie Jarvey
The actress scored the biopic's only nomination for her portrayal of Mildred Loving, who along with her husband helped to overturn several state bans on interracial marriage.
If moviegoing audiences weren't yet familiar with Ruth Negga, that changed Jan. 8 when Meryl Streep name-checked the Ethiopian-Irish actress during her much-discussed Golden Globes speech celebrating the diversity of Hollywood. "If I was at home, I would have jumped up and down and started screaming," laughs Negga, 35, who on Jan. 24 found herself with something else to celebrate when her name was announced among the Oscar nominees for best actress. She's being recognized for her portrayal of Mildred Loving in Jeff Nichols' Loving, about the couple behind the Supreme Court's landmark 1967 ruling on interracial marriage. The first-time nominee spoke with THR about her personal connection to the story, how the real Mildred (who died in 2008) might have felt about the film and why she's bringing peanuts to the Oscars.
What drew you to the story of Mildred and Richard Loving?
There's so many different reasons. You feel such empathy for this couple and what they went through. That resonates with me, and I think with any genuine human being — but also, I suppose, because I'm mixed race, although I had a very different history, personally, from what they went through, and the country that I come from has a very different history from America. I like being part of unearthing previously untold stories, bringing more and more attention to this couple. Their love for each other was such a tender, good thing. I think that's what people have responded to.
How did you and Nichols approach your performance?
We realized that our main priority was them as a couple. There is a velocity of their journey that was very important for us to show. We all just kind of wanted to strip it down and not really add anything superfluous.
Why was it important that Loving not turn into a big courtroom drama?
It wouldn't have been true to this couple. It would have been about the lawyers and the case instead of about these sweet human beings who were in love and just wanted to be together and live together and raise their family wherever they chose.
How do you think the real Mildred would have reacted to the film?
I've gathered she would be very shy of any press attention. That wasn't something she enjoyed. I would love for her to take away from this film the feeling that her efforts have been acknowledged, that they have been celebrated and that this is a sort of "thank you" from lots of people.
Has the reaction to the film been different since the election of Donald *****?
I think so. But what a serendipitous time for it to come out. I mean, in a good way. People legislating on other people's lives, encroaching on other people's lives, [the film] really feels like a sad mirror in a way to the present situation. But on the flip side, it's maybe a little bit of a solution to something because our film contains so many instances where compassion and empathy are key.
What was your most challenging scene?
Some of the things that we've taken from the documentary with the filmmaker coming in, that was quite nerve-racking because I did want to find some sort of visual accuracy and also an emotional accuracy, too. So that was a bit of a balancing act.
Have you received any advice about how to make it through your first Oscars night?
People have just been like, "Enjoy it. You know, this is your once-in-a-lifetime kind of chance. Drink it up, really just enjoy it and bring peanuts for snacks."
How did you feel when Meryl Streep called you out in her Golden Globes speech?
How would you feel if Meryl Streep said your name out loud? That's exactly how I felt. Astonished. Super flattered. I don't have any words to describe those emotions that were going on underneath. If I was at home, I might have jumped up and down and started screaming. I didn't think that was appropriate. To be honest, it wasn't about me, the speech. And to be there in the room, you could hear a pin drop. The hairs on my arm went up because it was so elegant, it was so truthful, and I think she was able to articulate what many, many of us felt — what many people feel — in such a beautiful way. How lucky I was to have been present. How lucky.
Source
The Full Story: Ruth Negga for AnOther Magazine S/S17
Ben Cobb sits down with the sensational Ruth Negga, who, in her role as a civil rights hero in Jeff Nichols’ Loving, is finally getting the recognition her breathtakingly nuanced performances deserve
Text Ben Cobb
Photography Collier Schorr
Styling Katie Shillingford
Ruth Negga is early. Ten minutes early. I know this because I’m early, but it’s my job to be early. Interviewees – especially actors – are never early, and Negga’s earliness is even more perplexing considering Odette’s, a busy local restaurant in Primrose Hill, was chosen for its proximity to her home. “I know, but being late makes me anxious,” she smiles, with a shrug, “though that doesn’t always stop me.” As we’re shown to a small table in the corner, she wonders why she’s never been to Odette’s before and mentions that she usually goes to a French place down the road called L’Absinthe. I’ve heard good things about here, I assure her.
If you haven’t heard of Ruth Negga then you’re obviously not hooked on Preacher, a deranged, ultra-violent US TV show based on a comic book and produced by comedy wonderboy Seth Rogen, starring Negga’s boyfriend Dominic Cooper as Jesse Custer, a hapless, foul-mouthed Texan preacher with superpowers, and Negga as Tulip O’Hare, a gung-ho bankrobber with a knack for weapons and wheelspins. You must have missed her as mutant scientist Raina in the Marvel series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and as a teleporting femme fatale with a heart condition in E4’s smash Misfits. And you definitely didn’t catch her barnstorming performance five years ago as diva supreme Dame Shirley Bassey.
Your loss, but Negga understands. Until recently, the 35-year-old didn’t feel like she was a recognisable name, and even worried it would cost her the role of Mildred in Jeff Nichols’ film Loving, an Oscar-worthy part that has seen her nominated for a Golden Globe and a BAFTA.
Set in 1958, Loving is the true story of Mildred and Richard Loving, a young interracial couple from Caroline County, Virginia, who cross the border into Washington, DC to get married and quickly find themselves in jail for violating Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws. Forced into exile, the pair resolve to fight, and so begins a nine-year battle that sees them take on the US establishment in the media and, ultimately, triumph in the Supreme Court.
Negga’s defiant, dignified portrayal of Mildred, opposite Joel Edgerton as her mumbling construction worker husband, is nothing short of eviscerating. If everything is right with the movie universe then both leads should soon be clutching golden statuettes.
For now though, dressed in a thick cashmere cable-knit pullover and matching beanie, Negga slides into her chair, relieved to be out of the cold. Her headwear, she insists, is staying on. “I’m growing my hair and it really shouldn’t be seen in this state,” she laughs, “I’m incubating it under this miners’ hat.” Scanning the menu, she chats about how much she enjoyed her cover shoot for AnOther Magazine and how she thinks she has a face from another time: “I don’t have a modern face because my eyes are so huge... My eyes sort of hijack my face!” She’s right. On-screen, her eyes are silver-screen siren captivating; in the flesh, hovering above her petite nose and lips, they take on manga-like proportions.
She’s fascinated by actresses up to the 1940s, “all those women with a bit of backbone and grit, women you wouldn’t mess with” like Katharine Hepburn, Lauren Bacall and Bette Davis. Which reminds her, she can’t wait for the new TV show Feud about the clash-of-the- titans rivalry between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, starring two of her favourite actresses Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange. She also name-checks Samantha Morton, Juliette Binoche (“huge fan, Three Colours Blue especially”) and Gena Rowlands (“she’s so terrifyingly brilliant sometimes it’s almost unbearable to watch!”).
Worried she can’t be heard over the lunchtime bustle, I slowly edge the Dictaphone closer. Negga has a soft voice, with a gentle Irish lilt. But don’t be fooled; at college her nickname was foghorn because, as she admits, she can be very loud – just not today. She thinks she sounds like her mother, but with a deeper tone because she smokes. She’s 5-foot-2-and-a-half, but says she never really feels small. “Although, I was looking at a photo the other day and suddenly realised I am actually quite small,” she gasps, feigning horror. “It was like a mouse who hangs around with elephants suddenly realising it’s not the same!”
She describes herself as shy “but shy doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily quiet or a goody-two-shoes,” she’s quick to point out. “It just means that you don’t like being terribly exposed. I think we’re drawn to people who aren’t overly loquacious, don’t you? There is something about people who don’t babble, who don’t fight for your attention that is very attractive. They draw people to them because there’s no neediness. People have to lean in.” I nod in agreement, suddenly aware how far I’m leaning in.
She talks with care and precision, marshalling her thoughts, which she tries to explain aren’t in her head but floating somewhere just above it. “It’s like when I talk I have to get them,” she says, slightly embarrassed and making a grabbing gesture into thin air. “It’s not an attention deficit sort of thing, it really isn’t. It’s just how I formulate my sentences, from the ether.” She seems to relish language, scrutinising her words, playing with the way they sound; asked a question, she often repeats it to herself, trying to unwrap the meaning and get at something inside. There’s no spiel: for Negga, conversation is alive and engaged.
With the waiter standing by, she orders the pork belly and a large glass of Bordeaux because, she beams, “I’m on my holidays!” She has just returned from a grueling US promotional tour for Loving; not that she’s complaining, she got to shake Steve Martin’s hand backstage at The Tonight Show and she couldn’t be prouder of the film or more passionate about its significance today. “Loving is tapping into something, and it’s not about politics... People need a couple like Richard and Mildred now; they need to know that change from a grassroots level is possible, that there is hope. The beautiful thing about Mildred is her hopefulness. Mildred and Richard are you and me – the everyday person, the next-door neighbour – who took on the establishment and won. That’s very encouraging to a lot of people, and particularly now, when you feel your voice isn’t being heard or your vote hasn’t been counted.”
Mildred is a hero of Negga’s. Years before auditioning for the part, she’d seen bits of the HBO documentary The Loving Story and remembers reading Mildred’s obituary and thinking to herself, “Who is this woman?” It was the thought of playing Mildred that initially drew her to the project, “but, as a person of colour, you can’t be ignorant of the fact that there are stories about race to be told, and I wanted to be part of that.
“I’ve always had an interest in American racial history,” she continues, “and I think we can see that there are still wounds that haven’t been properly healed. I know that it’s frightening for people to talk about but unless you do, they’re never going to be healed. We’re learning that this isn’t something to be solved; it’s a continuing conversation. Equality isn’t a box we can just tick and be done with.”
Negga’s parents – a white Irish nurse mother and, her father, a black Ethiopian doctor – met while working at the Black Lion Hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She was born on 4 May 1982 (and not, as every online source has it, 7 January: “I think that came from an article that said I had died!”). Her first memory is standing at a bus stop, captivated by the huge tropical raindrops falling. When political unrest erupted, Negga’s mother left with little Ruth for County Limerick. “I was three or four years old, dates are a bit shady,” she explains. “When you have a peripatetic childhood dates become unimportant or peculiar, they’re a luxury for people who grow up in a 2.4 household. I vaguely remember the move.”
The plan was for her father to join them and for the Negga family to head to America. But three years later, in 1988, a phone call delivered the devastating news that her father, still in Ethiopia, had been killed in a car crash. With no grief counselling offered to children at the time, it’s only recently that she’s turned to a therapist. “I didn’t know my father very well because I was so young,” she says. “I can only rely on other people’s testimony. Apparently, I have his dry humour and his intelligence, but maybe that’s my mum being self-deprecating... I definitely look like him.”
Growing up in a large Catholic family, surrounded by her mother’s eight brothers and sisters, who all-but-one lived on the same street, and 23 cousins, helped make Negga feel less like an only child. “Not that I’m distancing myself from being an only child,” she stresses, “I think only children get such a bad rep!” And, in this loving environment, she can’t remember ever feeling different from her light-skinned relations.
Ben Cobb sits down with the sensational Ruth Negga, who, in her role as a civil rights hero in Jeff Nichols’ Loving, is finally getting the recognition her breathtakingly nuanced performances deserve
Text Ben Cobb
Photography Collier Schorr
Styling Katie Shillingford
Ruth Negga is early. Ten minutes early. I know this because I’m early, but it’s my job to be early. Interviewees – especially actors – are never early, and Negga’s earliness is even more perplexing considering Odette’s, a busy local restaurant in Primrose Hill, was chosen for its proximity to her home. “I know, but being late makes me anxious,” she smiles, with a shrug, “though that doesn’t always stop me.” As we’re shown to a small table in the corner, she wonders why she’s never been to Odette’s before and mentions that she usually goes to a French place down the road called L’Absinthe. I’ve heard good things about here, I assure her.
If you haven’t heard of Ruth Negga then you’re obviously not hooked on Preacher, a deranged, ultra-violent US TV show based on a comic book and produced by comedy wonderboy Seth Rogen, starring Negga’s boyfriend Dominic Cooper as Jesse Custer, a hapless, foul-mouthed Texan preacher with superpowers, and Negga as Tulip O’Hare, a gung-ho bankrobber with a knack for weapons and wheelspins. You must have missed her as mutant scientist Raina in the Marvel series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and as a teleporting femme fatale with a heart condition in E4’s smash Misfits. And you definitely didn’t catch her barnstorming performance five years ago as diva supreme Dame Shirley Bassey.
Your loss, but Negga understands. Until recently, the 35-year-old didn’t feel like she was a recognisable name, and even worried it would cost her the role of Mildred in Jeff Nichols’ film Loving, an Oscar-worthy part that has seen her nominated for a Golden Globe and a BAFTA.
Set in 1958, Loving is the true story of Mildred and Richard Loving, a young interracial couple from Caroline County, Virginia, who cross the border into Washington, DC to get married and quickly find themselves in jail for violating Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws. Forced into exile, the pair resolve to fight, and so begins a nine-year battle that sees them take on the US establishment in the media and, ultimately, triumph in the Supreme Court.
Negga’s defiant, dignified portrayal of Mildred, opposite Joel Edgerton as her mumbling construction worker husband, is nothing short of eviscerating. If everything is right with the movie universe then both leads should soon be clutching golden statuettes.
For now though, dressed in a thick cashmere cable-knit pullover and matching beanie, Negga slides into her chair, relieved to be out of the cold. Her headwear, she insists, is staying on. “I’m growing my hair and it really shouldn’t be seen in this state,” she laughs, “I’m incubating it under this miners’ hat.” Scanning the menu, she chats about how much she enjoyed her cover shoot for AnOther Magazine and how she thinks she has a face from another time: “I don’t have a modern face because my eyes are so huge... My eyes sort of hijack my face!” She’s right. On-screen, her eyes are silver-screen siren captivating; in the flesh, hovering above her petite nose and lips, they take on manga-like proportions.
She’s fascinated by actresses up to the 1940s, “all those women with a bit of backbone and grit, women you wouldn’t mess with” like Katharine Hepburn, Lauren Bacall and Bette Davis. Which reminds her, she can’t wait for the new TV show Feud about the clash-of-the- titans rivalry between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, starring two of her favourite actresses Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange. She also name-checks Samantha Morton, Juliette Binoche (“huge fan, Three Colours Blue especially”) and Gena Rowlands (“she’s so terrifyingly brilliant sometimes it’s almost unbearable to watch!”).
Worried she can’t be heard over the lunchtime bustle, I slowly edge the Dictaphone closer. Negga has a soft voice, with a gentle Irish lilt. But don’t be fooled; at college her nickname was foghorn because, as she admits, she can be very loud – just not today. She thinks she sounds like her mother, but with a deeper tone because she smokes. She’s 5-foot-2-and-a-half, but says she never really feels small. “Although, I was looking at a photo the other day and suddenly realised I am actually quite small,” she gasps, feigning horror. “It was like a mouse who hangs around with elephants suddenly realising it’s not the same!”
She describes herself as shy “but shy doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily quiet or a goody-two-shoes,” she’s quick to point out. “It just means that you don’t like being terribly exposed. I think we’re drawn to people who aren’t overly loquacious, don’t you? There is something about people who don’t babble, who don’t fight for your attention that is very attractive. They draw people to them because there’s no neediness. People have to lean in.” I nod in agreement, suddenly aware how far I’m leaning in.
She talks with care and precision, marshalling her thoughts, which she tries to explain aren’t in her head but floating somewhere just above it. “It’s like when I talk I have to get them,” she says, slightly embarrassed and making a grabbing gesture into thin air. “It’s not an attention deficit sort of thing, it really isn’t. It’s just how I formulate my sentences, from the ether.” She seems to relish language, scrutinising her words, playing with the way they sound; asked a question, she often repeats it to herself, trying to unwrap the meaning and get at something inside. There’s no spiel: for Negga, conversation is alive and engaged.
With the waiter standing by, she orders the pork belly and a large glass of Bordeaux because, she beams, “I’m on my holidays!” She has just returned from a grueling US promotional tour for Loving; not that she’s complaining, she got to shake Steve Martin’s hand backstage at The Tonight Show and she couldn’t be prouder of the film or more passionate about its significance today. “Loving is tapping into something, and it’s not about politics... People need a couple like Richard and Mildred now; they need to know that change from a grassroots level is possible, that there is hope. The beautiful thing about Mildred is her hopefulness. Mildred and Richard are you and me – the everyday person, the next-door neighbour – who took on the establishment and won. That’s very encouraging to a lot of people, and particularly now, when you feel your voice isn’t being heard or your vote hasn’t been counted.”
Mildred is a hero of Negga’s. Years before auditioning for the part, she’d seen bits of the HBO documentary The Loving Story and remembers reading Mildred’s obituary and thinking to herself, “Who is this woman?” It was the thought of playing Mildred that initially drew her to the project, “but, as a person of colour, you can’t be ignorant of the fact that there are stories about race to be told, and I wanted to be part of that.
“I’ve always had an interest in American racial history,” she continues, “and I think we can see that there are still wounds that haven’t been properly healed. I know that it’s frightening for people to talk about but unless you do, they’re never going to be healed. We’re learning that this isn’t something to be solved; it’s a continuing conversation. Equality isn’t a box we can just tick and be done with.”
Negga’s parents – a white Irish nurse mother and, her father, a black Ethiopian doctor – met while working at the Black Lion Hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She was born on 4 May 1982 (and not, as every online source has it, 7 January: “I think that came from an article that said I had died!”). Her first memory is standing at a bus stop, captivated by the huge tropical raindrops falling. When political unrest erupted, Negga’s mother left with little Ruth for County Limerick. “I was three or four years old, dates are a bit shady,” she explains. “When you have a peripatetic childhood dates become unimportant or peculiar, they’re a luxury for people who grow up in a 2.4 household. I vaguely remember the move.”
The plan was for her father to join them and for the Negga family to head to America. But three years later, in 1988, a phone call delivered the devastating news that her father, still in Ethiopia, had been killed in a car crash. With no grief counselling offered to children at the time, it’s only recently that she’s turned to a therapist. “I didn’t know my father very well because I was so young,” she says. “I can only rely on other people’s testimony. Apparently, I have his dry humour and his intelligence, but maybe that’s my mum being self-deprecating... I definitely look like him.”
Growing up in a large Catholic family, surrounded by her mother’s eight brothers and sisters, who all-but-one lived on the same street, and 23 cousins, helped make Negga feel less like an only child. “Not that I’m distancing myself from being an only child,” she stresses, “I think only children get such a bad rep!” And, in this loving environment, she can’t remember ever feeling different from her light-skinned relations.
An exhibitionist, melodramatic and gregarious – her words – she would dance around her grandmother’s living-room and make everyone join in. She hated the endless, predictable grind of school, and spent most of her time plucking up the courage to resign from her altar girl duties. She lost herself in the fairytales of Hans Christian Andersen, in particular The Snow Queen – “I love the bit when the shard of glass goes in Kai’s eye!” – and The Little Mermaid, “which is not like the Disney version at all, it ends terribly!”
She remembers finding dead birds and holding mass for them, but doesn’t think she was a particularly macabre child, just Catholic. Later, when asked if she’d describe herself as romantic, she reveals another dark-tinged seam: “Does romantic mean When Harry Met Sally? Or does it mean Betty Blue? The fact that he kills her in the end of Betty Blue is romantic to me. It’s a different kind of romance to Sleepless In Seattle, but with the same intentions.”
As a teenager, her bedroom walls were covered in pictures of Jason Priestley from Beverly Hills, 90210, Nirvana, Hendrix, U2’s Boy, Prince and “a big poster from the Ethiopian tourist board which said, ‘13 months of sunshine!’ – because in Ethiopia we have a different calendar so there are actually 13 months.” Her first crush was David Bowie in Labyrinth, she sighs.
It was the transcendent performances of Bowie and, later, Kate Bush that inspired Negga to pursue acting. “There is something about their unashamed communing with something,” she begins, sputtering like a fangirl. “They’re not too cool for school – I mean, they are too cool for school – but they’re plugging into something. It’s not that sort of punk, decimating of things, it’s creating something, it’s very spiritual, and that was always attractive to me.”
Aged 18, with her career advice results suggesting a future as an antique dealer or a bowling alley attendant, she enrolled on the BA drama course at the Trinity College Dublin Samuel Beckett Theatre. There was never a plan B, she says. Just two years after graduating, her part in Duck at the Royal Court earned her a nomination for Most Promising Newcomer at the 2004 Olivier Awards, and the attention of BBC casting agents. Steady work on TV dramas was quick to follow.
“I’ve never had to do a job other than acting. Maybe if I’d had a back-up plan it wouldn’t have worked out...” She pauses, as if giving the idea some thought. “The thing is the plan is to work, right? My only plan has been to work with people who are kind, that’s very important to me, and never to work with *******s, people who make life more difficult than it needs to be.” For the past seven years, it appears her plan also includes working with her boyfriend as often as possible.
“To be honest, I don’t know how it’s happened,” she says. “It sounds very premeditated but it’s absolutely not.” They were both in Neil Jordan’s 2005 glamrock odyssey Breakfast on Pluto, also Negga’s first film, “but we weren’t in the same scenes, Dom was a soldier in Northern Ireland who dances with Cillian Murphy.” Their first double-act came in 2009 playing lovers at the National Theatre in Phèdre, starring Helen Mirren; their offstage romance started during the production. Last year, they came together again to fight off an army of thorny orcs in the computer-game-turned-blockbuster Warcraft, and then Preacher happened.
For the record, Negga read for Preacher first. She had been nervous in her audition for the part of wild woman Tulip, so asked Cooper to put her on tape because, she explains, she’s often better on tape. “In the middle of reading the kids’ parts, he suddenly said, ‘This is ****ing amazing!’ I showed him the cover of one of the comics and was like, ‘Yes, and you look exactly like him!’ He made a few calls...”
An over-the-top, explosive character like Tulip must be a release after the intense stillness of Mildred. “Actually, I think I’m always quite a ham in acting,” she says. This from a woman being heralded for one of the most nuanced performances of recent times. “Yes, ham; by which I mean using your full physicality. If you do anything with commitment and integrity it’ll resonate with people, they recognise that whether it’s a super quiet or loud performance.”
Negga and Cooper are about to return to Albuquerque, New Mexico to film the second season of Preacher but, before they do, she confesses that she needs to finish watching the first season. “I know,” she pleads, “but because of Loving I haven’t had the time.” She describes the set as a “no-*******s-need-apply territory” and “a lot of fun”, and talks about the hugeness of the New Mexican landscape, how it’s like a Georgia O’Keeffe painting, a magical place with a lot of ley lines, apparently.
“I feel very lucky to be doing what I’m doing,” she says, finishing her glass of wine. “Like all art, there’s an unquantifiable aspect to this job, and there is a huge amount of luck involved. But luck is a funny thing; good or bad, it plays an important part in everything.” She brings up the small matter of ending up on the cutting- room floor of the triple-Oscar-winning drama 12 Years a Slave: Negga played a runaway slave called Celeste and shot for three days in a crocodile-infested swamp, but the scene didn’t make the final cut. She vividly remembers the moment Steve McQueen, the director, called to let her down gently and she just knew before he had said anything. “It was very unlucky but the luck involved in that was that it was the same casting director who later cast me in Loving. So you can look at things in many different ways... Do you mind if we go outside so I can smoke?”
We sit at a table on the pavement under heaters and watch a wild-eyed Husky bolt out of Primrose Hill Pets and bark at an unassuming Pomeranian, their owners eye each other suspiciously. Negga is more a cat person, she says, lighting a cigarette, but she travels too much to have one. Just the day before, the Daily Mail website photographed her and Cooper walking down this very stretch of road in matching puffer jackets. Does that level of inane intrusion bother her?
“Well, I do live in Primrose Hill which is probably not the best place,” she admits. “What can you do? It’s not part of the job and anyone who tells you that’s what you signed up for can **** off. But also you’ve got to get over yourself about it. The worst thing you can do is look, just ask other people to let you know on a scale of ten how bad it is.” She admits there is a peacock element to being an actor but “I don’t think I’m terribly vain, in that it’s not very linked to my confidence. It’s not as important to me as it probably should be. I mean, I came today without my eyebrows being threaded and just look at these fingernails!” She holds out her hand to reveal chipped cherry varnish. Her healthy disregard for image will be put to the test in the run up to the Oscars; maybe, she says, but she doesn’t think it’ll change her.
Negga is equally uninterested in social media and proudly claims never to have been on Facebook. “I barely have a phone! It broke a few weeks ago and it was such a relief. I delayed taking it into a shop. I love being not contactable.” So, when everyone else is posting selfies on Instagram in between takes on Preacher, what is she doing? “I play pranks,” she says. “My best prank – I’ve done it a lot of times – is putting cling film over the toilet seat!” My expression obviously gives something away. “What? Is that awful? I thought it was quite funny... Look, it’s never going to be a number two situation because you’re going to feel it on your arse! So, people are safe... unless it’s a serious emergency... Oh no.”
Her downtime at home is more about feeding her brain. She’s just binged on Stranger Things and is three seasons into The Good Wife. She recommends Fleabag, her friend Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s BBC3 comedy series, and The 13th on Netflix, which “is all about how the American prison system is the mirror of slavery”. She’s also a bookworm: “I’ve just finished Swing Time, Zadie Smith’s new novel. Brilliant. And then, oddly enough, I read a memoir about surfing called Barbarian Days.”
Our lunch has now overrun into a two-and-a-half-hour encounter, and Negga has to dash. Before she leaves, I wonder if there’s a piece of writing that she’s returned to over the years, mantra-like.
“Yes, Maya Angelou’s poem And Still I Rise,” she says, stubbing out her cigarette. “It’s one of those things I try to remember whenever things are looking difficult or insurmountable. Maya Angelou is a hero of mine because she acknowledged everything about herself, good and bad, and it was all OK. And I think we have a tendency now to latch on to only the good aspects of ourselves and that does not the whole person make. That’s denying a part of yourself and it’s dangerous, it’s not healthy. It’s so important to own everything about yourself.”
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She remembers finding dead birds and holding mass for them, but doesn’t think she was a particularly macabre child, just Catholic. Later, when asked if she’d describe herself as romantic, she reveals another dark-tinged seam: “Does romantic mean When Harry Met Sally? Or does it mean Betty Blue? The fact that he kills her in the end of Betty Blue is romantic to me. It’s a different kind of romance to Sleepless In Seattle, but with the same intentions.”
As a teenager, her bedroom walls were covered in pictures of Jason Priestley from Beverly Hills, 90210, Nirvana, Hendrix, U2’s Boy, Prince and “a big poster from the Ethiopian tourist board which said, ‘13 months of sunshine!’ – because in Ethiopia we have a different calendar so there are actually 13 months.” Her first crush was David Bowie in Labyrinth, she sighs.
It was the transcendent performances of Bowie and, later, Kate Bush that inspired Negga to pursue acting. “There is something about their unashamed communing with something,” she begins, sputtering like a fangirl. “They’re not too cool for school – I mean, they are too cool for school – but they’re plugging into something. It’s not that sort of punk, decimating of things, it’s creating something, it’s very spiritual, and that was always attractive to me.”
Aged 18, with her career advice results suggesting a future as an antique dealer or a bowling alley attendant, she enrolled on the BA drama course at the Trinity College Dublin Samuel Beckett Theatre. There was never a plan B, she says. Just two years after graduating, her part in Duck at the Royal Court earned her a nomination for Most Promising Newcomer at the 2004 Olivier Awards, and the attention of BBC casting agents. Steady work on TV dramas was quick to follow.
“I’ve never had to do a job other than acting. Maybe if I’d had a back-up plan it wouldn’t have worked out...” She pauses, as if giving the idea some thought. “The thing is the plan is to work, right? My only plan has been to work with people who are kind, that’s very important to me, and never to work with *******s, people who make life more difficult than it needs to be.” For the past seven years, it appears her plan also includes working with her boyfriend as often as possible.
“To be honest, I don’t know how it’s happened,” she says. “It sounds very premeditated but it’s absolutely not.” They were both in Neil Jordan’s 2005 glamrock odyssey Breakfast on Pluto, also Negga’s first film, “but we weren’t in the same scenes, Dom was a soldier in Northern Ireland who dances with Cillian Murphy.” Their first double-act came in 2009 playing lovers at the National Theatre in Phèdre, starring Helen Mirren; their offstage romance started during the production. Last year, they came together again to fight off an army of thorny orcs in the computer-game-turned-blockbuster Warcraft, and then Preacher happened.
For the record, Negga read for Preacher first. She had been nervous in her audition for the part of wild woman Tulip, so asked Cooper to put her on tape because, she explains, she’s often better on tape. “In the middle of reading the kids’ parts, he suddenly said, ‘This is ****ing amazing!’ I showed him the cover of one of the comics and was like, ‘Yes, and you look exactly like him!’ He made a few calls...”
An over-the-top, explosive character like Tulip must be a release after the intense stillness of Mildred. “Actually, I think I’m always quite a ham in acting,” she says. This from a woman being heralded for one of the most nuanced performances of recent times. “Yes, ham; by which I mean using your full physicality. If you do anything with commitment and integrity it’ll resonate with people, they recognise that whether it’s a super quiet or loud performance.”
Negga and Cooper are about to return to Albuquerque, New Mexico to film the second season of Preacher but, before they do, she confesses that she needs to finish watching the first season. “I know,” she pleads, “but because of Loving I haven’t had the time.” She describes the set as a “no-*******s-need-apply territory” and “a lot of fun”, and talks about the hugeness of the New Mexican landscape, how it’s like a Georgia O’Keeffe painting, a magical place with a lot of ley lines, apparently.
“I feel very lucky to be doing what I’m doing,” she says, finishing her glass of wine. “Like all art, there’s an unquantifiable aspect to this job, and there is a huge amount of luck involved. But luck is a funny thing; good or bad, it plays an important part in everything.” She brings up the small matter of ending up on the cutting- room floor of the triple-Oscar-winning drama 12 Years a Slave: Negga played a runaway slave called Celeste and shot for three days in a crocodile-infested swamp, but the scene didn’t make the final cut. She vividly remembers the moment Steve McQueen, the director, called to let her down gently and she just knew before he had said anything. “It was very unlucky but the luck involved in that was that it was the same casting director who later cast me in Loving. So you can look at things in many different ways... Do you mind if we go outside so I can smoke?”
We sit at a table on the pavement under heaters and watch a wild-eyed Husky bolt out of Primrose Hill Pets and bark at an unassuming Pomeranian, their owners eye each other suspiciously. Negga is more a cat person, she says, lighting a cigarette, but she travels too much to have one. Just the day before, the Daily Mail website photographed her and Cooper walking down this very stretch of road in matching puffer jackets. Does that level of inane intrusion bother her?
“Well, I do live in Primrose Hill which is probably not the best place,” she admits. “What can you do? It’s not part of the job and anyone who tells you that’s what you signed up for can **** off. But also you’ve got to get over yourself about it. The worst thing you can do is look, just ask other people to let you know on a scale of ten how bad it is.” She admits there is a peacock element to being an actor but “I don’t think I’m terribly vain, in that it’s not very linked to my confidence. It’s not as important to me as it probably should be. I mean, I came today without my eyebrows being threaded and just look at these fingernails!” She holds out her hand to reveal chipped cherry varnish. Her healthy disregard for image will be put to the test in the run up to the Oscars; maybe, she says, but she doesn’t think it’ll change her.
Negga is equally uninterested in social media and proudly claims never to have been on Facebook. “I barely have a phone! It broke a few weeks ago and it was such a relief. I delayed taking it into a shop. I love being not contactable.” So, when everyone else is posting selfies on Instagram in between takes on Preacher, what is she doing? “I play pranks,” she says. “My best prank – I’ve done it a lot of times – is putting cling film over the toilet seat!” My expression obviously gives something away. “What? Is that awful? I thought it was quite funny... Look, it’s never going to be a number two situation because you’re going to feel it on your arse! So, people are safe... unless it’s a serious emergency... Oh no.”
Her downtime at home is more about feeding her brain. She’s just binged on Stranger Things and is three seasons into The Good Wife. She recommends Fleabag, her friend Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s BBC3 comedy series, and The 13th on Netflix, which “is all about how the American prison system is the mirror of slavery”. She’s also a bookworm: “I’ve just finished Swing Time, Zadie Smith’s new novel. Brilliant. And then, oddly enough, I read a memoir about surfing called Barbarian Days.”
Our lunch has now overrun into a two-and-a-half-hour encounter, and Negga has to dash. Before she leaves, I wonder if there’s a piece of writing that she’s returned to over the years, mantra-like.
“Yes, Maya Angelou’s poem And Still I Rise,” she says, stubbing out her cigarette. “It’s one of those things I try to remember whenever things are looking difficult or insurmountable. Maya Angelou is a hero of mine because she acknowledged everything about herself, good and bad, and it was all OK. And I think we have a tendency now to latch on to only the good aspects of ourselves and that does not the whole person make. That’s denying a part of yourself and it’s dangerous, it’s not healthy. It’s so important to own everything about yourself.”
Source
Attending the 2017 Film Independent Spirit Awards on February 25, 2017 in Santa Monica, California.
Zimbio
Zimbio
Before the Oscars, Ruth Negga opens up about fashion and the future
By Ingrid Schmidt
In Los Angeles for the 89th Academy Awards, lead actress nominee Ruth Negga stepped into Bungalow 1 at Chateau Marmont on Friday night for a party hosted by Gemfields to celebrate a partnership with the actress and her stylist, Karla Welch.
Through awards season, Negga has worn jewelry crafted with Gemfields rubies and emeralds. The London-based company supplies an array of jewelry designers (including L.A. brands Kimberly McDonald, Sarah Hendler, Loree Rodkin, Jacquie Aiche, Hoorsenbuhs and Spinelli Kilcollin) with responsibly-sourced colored gemstones.
At the soirée, Negga’s classic black trousers and ethereal sequined, bell-sleeved top by L.A. label Rodarte were punctuated by a 23-karat heart-shaped Gemfields ruby pendant by Fred Leighton strung on an ivory velvet ribbon.
Party guests, including Rodarte co-designer Laura Mulleavy, local jeweler Irene Neuwirth and actresses Michelle Dockery, Kat Graham, Busy Philipps and Zelda Williams (daughter of Robin Williams), toasted with Perrier-Jouët Champagne.
As the party started, Negga, nominated for her role in the interracial love-story biopic, “Loving,” talked jewels, fashion, style icons, her Hollywood future and what’s always in her handbag.
"I don’t wear jewelry,” Negga said. “I mean, I hadn’t [until recently] because I read about how diamonds are sourced and was so horrified by it. Gemfields is attractive to me, because they are notoriously sustainable. Karla has taught me that anything is possible, but it can be done well, with the best intentions. Fashion doesn’t have to be about slaying things left, right and center.”
Pointing out that Negga’s ears aren’t even pierced so she requires clip-on earrings, Welch said, “Our main goal is to not use diamonds and to use color with stones that are ethically sourced. I love that Gemfields works with young, cool, indie designers, so there are so many options. For everyday looks, Ruth loves a ton of rings. She will wear five rings. That was something she totally brought into my vernacular.”
But the duo’s top-line approach to red carpet jewelry appears to be that less is more. “She’s a very petite person, so we don’t overdo it,” Welch said.
At the 2017 Golden Globes in January, 35-year-old Negga accessorized her custom Louis Vuitton column dress with a single Fred Leighton cuff bracelet, embellished with a 25.5-carat Gemfields ruby. Negga will wear jewelry designed with Gemfields stones to the Oscars, but wouldn’t offer further details about her look before Sunday’s main event.
“The fashion world has really embraced Ruth, and I think that’s amazing; she’s a dream girl,” said Welch, who also counts Olivia Wilde, Sarah Paulson and Justin Bieber as clients.
“Fearless and fashion-forward” is how she described Negga’s style philosophy. “And she is a sleeve girl,” Welch declared, noting the “crazy-amazing” Rodarte bell-sleeved top as evidence. “There’s always a little bit of embellishment. She’s not a minimalist. But there’s an elegance to her, as well.”
However, Negga confessed she feels more aligned with Tulip O’Hare, the gun-wielding badass she plays in the comic-book-inspired AMC television series “Preacher” (Negga is currently filming season two in New Orleans) than with Mildred, her quiet, demure character in “Loving.”
“I would aspire to be Mildred, but I am a bit of a Tasmanian devil in my energies,” she said, noting that her hotel room was already a mess a 1 1/2 days into her stay. “I definitely think I’m more like Tulip in how I present myself to the world, but I’m sort of Mildred on the inside.”
Her go-to uniform off-set if she has to get dressed in 10 minutes, is “a long batwing dress that you can wear over jeans when you’re feeling a bit bloated,” she said. “Then I knock on some heels and these Abyssinian lion head drop earrings that a friend made for me.”
And her off-duty wardrobe tends to be devoid of color.
“In my everyday life, I’m afraid to say I stick to black,” Negga says. “I’m quite somber in what I wear because it’s most flattering. But I quite like Lou Doillon and Charlotte Gainsbourg [Jane Birkin’s daughters] and the French look, which is a bit androgynous. I’m not tall and slim but I think it can work. Like the styles on Jean Seberg in ‘Breathless,’ those kind of looks. And if I go out and have to dress up, I [channel] Dorothy Dandridge in the ’50s or Eartha Kitt, who I’m obsessed with. They are my style icons.”
Negga mentioned offhandedly that her handbag is always filled with “wrappers of various things,” including pomegranate-flavored Pur chewing gum. And she won’t leave home without Le Labo’s Santal perfume, Lancôme lip balm, under-eye concealer and her cellphone (“I would love to have it wheeled over by a 40-ton truck!” she joked).
When it comes to collaborating with Welch for her red carpet looks, Negga said they rarely disagree.
“She knows that I’m not a mainstream commercial person, to put it bluntly,” Negga said. “I like things that are different. Innovative. Maybe some people see that as risk, but I see it as exploring.”
The same might be said of her work. Asked if she’s working on any future film projects, Negga exclaimed, “No, none! My agent is standing right there, but I tell him that I just want to go on the straight and narrow. So much of being an actor is thinking about, ‘Oh my next role and my next role and my next role.’ I’m really enjoying being present at the moment. And this is so rare. To be in the moment where you actually have a job that’s paying you. I want to just be here and now. And be grateful for that.”
Source
By Ingrid Schmidt
In Los Angeles for the 89th Academy Awards, lead actress nominee Ruth Negga stepped into Bungalow 1 at Chateau Marmont on Friday night for a party hosted by Gemfields to celebrate a partnership with the actress and her stylist, Karla Welch.
Through awards season, Negga has worn jewelry crafted with Gemfields rubies and emeralds. The London-based company supplies an array of jewelry designers (including L.A. brands Kimberly McDonald, Sarah Hendler, Loree Rodkin, Jacquie Aiche, Hoorsenbuhs and Spinelli Kilcollin) with responsibly-sourced colored gemstones.
At the soirée, Negga’s classic black trousers and ethereal sequined, bell-sleeved top by L.A. label Rodarte were punctuated by a 23-karat heart-shaped Gemfields ruby pendant by Fred Leighton strung on an ivory velvet ribbon.
Party guests, including Rodarte co-designer Laura Mulleavy, local jeweler Irene Neuwirth and actresses Michelle Dockery, Kat Graham, Busy Philipps and Zelda Williams (daughter of Robin Williams), toasted with Perrier-Jouët Champagne.
As the party started, Negga, nominated for her role in the interracial love-story biopic, “Loving,” talked jewels, fashion, style icons, her Hollywood future and what’s always in her handbag.
"I don’t wear jewelry,” Negga said. “I mean, I hadn’t [until recently] because I read about how diamonds are sourced and was so horrified by it. Gemfields is attractive to me, because they are notoriously sustainable. Karla has taught me that anything is possible, but it can be done well, with the best intentions. Fashion doesn’t have to be about slaying things left, right and center.”
Pointing out that Negga’s ears aren’t even pierced so she requires clip-on earrings, Welch said, “Our main goal is to not use diamonds and to use color with stones that are ethically sourced. I love that Gemfields works with young, cool, indie designers, so there are so many options. For everyday looks, Ruth loves a ton of rings. She will wear five rings. That was something she totally brought into my vernacular.”
But the duo’s top-line approach to red carpet jewelry appears to be that less is more. “She’s a very petite person, so we don’t overdo it,” Welch said.
At the 2017 Golden Globes in January, 35-year-old Negga accessorized her custom Louis Vuitton column dress with a single Fred Leighton cuff bracelet, embellished with a 25.5-carat Gemfields ruby. Negga will wear jewelry designed with Gemfields stones to the Oscars, but wouldn’t offer further details about her look before Sunday’s main event.
“The fashion world has really embraced Ruth, and I think that’s amazing; she’s a dream girl,” said Welch, who also counts Olivia Wilde, Sarah Paulson and Justin Bieber as clients.
“Fearless and fashion-forward” is how she described Negga’s style philosophy. “And she is a sleeve girl,” Welch declared, noting the “crazy-amazing” Rodarte bell-sleeved top as evidence. “There’s always a little bit of embellishment. She’s not a minimalist. But there’s an elegance to her, as well.”
However, Negga confessed she feels more aligned with Tulip O’Hare, the gun-wielding badass she plays in the comic-book-inspired AMC television series “Preacher” (Negga is currently filming season two in New Orleans) than with Mildred, her quiet, demure character in “Loving.”
“I would aspire to be Mildred, but I am a bit of a Tasmanian devil in my energies,” she said, noting that her hotel room was already a mess a 1 1/2 days into her stay. “I definitely think I’m more like Tulip in how I present myself to the world, but I’m sort of Mildred on the inside.”
Her go-to uniform off-set if she has to get dressed in 10 minutes, is “a long batwing dress that you can wear over jeans when you’re feeling a bit bloated,” she said. “Then I knock on some heels and these Abyssinian lion head drop earrings that a friend made for me.”
And her off-duty wardrobe tends to be devoid of color.
“In my everyday life, I’m afraid to say I stick to black,” Negga says. “I’m quite somber in what I wear because it’s most flattering. But I quite like Lou Doillon and Charlotte Gainsbourg [Jane Birkin’s daughters] and the French look, which is a bit androgynous. I’m not tall and slim but I think it can work. Like the styles on Jean Seberg in ‘Breathless,’ those kind of looks. And if I go out and have to dress up, I [channel] Dorothy Dandridge in the ’50s or Eartha Kitt, who I’m obsessed with. They are my style icons.”
Negga mentioned offhandedly that her handbag is always filled with “wrappers of various things,” including pomegranate-flavored Pur chewing gum. And she won’t leave home without Le Labo’s Santal perfume, Lancôme lip balm, under-eye concealer and her cellphone (“I would love to have it wheeled over by a 40-ton truck!” she joked).
When it comes to collaborating with Welch for her red carpet looks, Negga said they rarely disagree.
“She knows that I’m not a mainstream commercial person, to put it bluntly,” Negga said. “I like things that are different. Innovative. Maybe some people see that as risk, but I see it as exploring.”
The same might be said of her work. Asked if she’s working on any future film projects, Negga exclaimed, “No, none! My agent is standing right there, but I tell him that I just want to go on the straight and narrow. So much of being an actor is thinking about, ‘Oh my next role and my next role and my next role.’ I’m really enjoying being present at the moment. And this is so rare. To be in the moment where you actually have a job that’s paying you. I want to just be here and now. And be grateful for that.”
Source
