NAOMIE HARRIS plays Miss Moneypenny in the new James Bond film Skyfall.
But this time Moneypenny is an action girl for the British secret service rather than an
MI6 secretary.
It’s another great role for Naomie after finding fame in movies like 28 Days Later,
Pirates Of The Caribbean and Miami Vice.
Here Naomie, 36, who is single, tells GARTH PEARCE what her mother taught her.
“MY mum, Lisselle Kayla, is my soulmate.
She brought me up on her own and I only met my dad for the first time in 2009.
She is an amazing woman. She has helped me at every stage. She looks so young people think she’s my sister. She has always believed in me, more than I believed in myself.
Whenever I say: “I’m not going to get this part” or “I am not going to be good in this,” she will say: “Yes you are and yes, you can.”
I have been acting from the age of nine and earned money on children’s TV.
I always wanted to act and would go to the Anna Scher Theatre School in London twice a week, after normal school.
The money I earned was so useful when I went to Cambridge. My mum had insisted I save — and that paid for university. It should have been a bit more fun but I was too intense about my work. If I was advising anyone else, I would say take it less seriously.
In action ... Naomie as new Miss Moneypenny
Columbia Pictures
I thought I was going to find like-minded people and we would sit up until the early hours and talk about the meaning of life. But it wasn’t like that at all. They would talk about their posh schools and there was me, a black girl from Finsbury Park. I was in tears most days and I was back on the train to mum every weekend! I did two years at drama school in Bristol after uni. By this time the money had run out, so I got a job in a call centre. I loved it in Bristol — the teachers were dedicated and passionate.
Mum came to England, aged five, with her parents — both dead now — from Jamaica. But I am a real London girl.
When my grandad was alive, I knew him well. He even took me to Jamaica when I was about three and I still feel an affinity to the island. Once I started having some success as an actress, I lived out of two suitcases for about three years. I’d be travelling from location to location in places like South Africa and Ireland and put my stuff in to storage. Whenever I returned home I would stay with my mum, because all the travelling made me feel rootless.
When I was away, I would also telephone her every day. We were in constant touch and she would visit me on film sets, particularly the ones far away. She was the dialect coach on the film Small Island and on Pirates Of The Caribbean too. She doesn’t have a Jamaican accent but is a brilliant teacher of accents.
I am aware that my standards are high in conducting myself properly. I have been offered drugs but have never taken them. But I’m always quite shocked if someone does offer them to me.
If someone takes drugs, I suppose it is understandable to offer them but I have no interest. Alcohol? I just never liked the taste. My mum is like that too.
So I have never drunk a whole glass of wine, just tasted it.
When I did the sex scenes with Andy Serkis in Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll — the film about rockstar Ian Dury — I had a body double.
I don’t like sex scenes in films, especially if you know from the film’s story that someone is part of a couple.
I don’t want to see sex on screen, as you know they are together. It is also above the call of duty for me, as an actress, to take my clothes off. It should not be my job.
I was 32 on that film, playing a 19-year-old, but I always think of myself as being much younger than I am. I don’t think I have become jaded at any point.
I have never lived a sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll lifestyle. I don’t even smoke.
I feel as if I have been an adult since the age of about five!”
