SPOTLIGHT
Naomie Harris, the brainy British beauty starring in The First Grader.
Naomie Harris, 34, has been acting in Britain since she was nine, and along the way she has managed to earn a degree in political science from Cambridge and has trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Director Danny Boyle (127 Hours, Slumdog Millionaire)introduced her to international audiences in 2002 in 28 Days Later, his hit film about Londoners combating zombies. Most recently Harris starred in Boyle’s very successful production of Frankenstein at the U.K.’s National Theatre. “Danny is a complete and utter genius,” says Harris. “He is absolutely brilliant at giving notes: This is what you need to be giving the audience, this is what you need to be feeling.… You relax and let yourself be carried through the journey by him.” This month she stars in The First Grader (National Geographic Entertainment), which was an audience favorite at both the Telluride and Toronto film festivals. Based on an article in the Los Angeles Times by Robyn Dixon, it is the story of a teacher in Kenya (Harris) who fights for the right of an 84-year-old villager to be educated despite his age. Justin Chadwick, who directed the award-winning British TV mini-series Bleak House and the movie The Other Boleyn Girl, filmed The First Grader entirely on location and used lots of local talent. The experience was exhilarating for Harris. “There was an incredibly generous spirit among these people,” she says. “At the start I was thinking, Oh, I’m going to work with these really poor children, and I’m going to be so affected by the fact that they have so little, when we in the West have so much. Actually, what I was struck by was they have so much, and we have so little. They have a strong sense of family, a strong sense of community—a real sense of belonging. I was incredibly touched by that.”
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