Fellow Brit Cynthia Erivo is also nominated – yet, raised by a single mum in South London, had to go to the U.S. for her huge talent to be recognised
THE picture was just another snap at an awards ceremony but the emerg - ing narrative was clear.
There were Hollywood super - stars Nicole Kidman and Charlize Theron. Between them was Cynthia Erivo, the 33year-old British actress who this week was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar.
For there is no doubt Ms Erivo is Hollywood hot property now.
Having slogged all the way from South London to Broadway in her career, she is finally close to the ultimate prize — an Academy Award.
And it is chiefly in America that her talent has been recognised: last week she was overlooked for a Bafta nomination for her role as slavery abolitionist Harriet Tubman in Harriet ( while Florence Pugh was nominated for Best Supporting Actress), leading the Mail’s Baz Bamigboye to comment on the ‘great shame’ that she wasn ’t properly rewarded by her home country.
Calling her an ‘extraordinary talent ’, he described Bafta’s inaction as a clear ‘snub’. The slur was picked up on social media, too, where the hashtag # BAFTAS So White questioned Cynthia’s absence from the nominations list.
Meanwhile, Cynthia reportedly refused an invitation to perform musically at the Bafta Awards. Since the outcry, Bafta has promised to look again at its diversity policy.
If Cynthia wins the Oscar next month, she will make history as the youngest person ever to win a so - called EGOT — a full set of Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards. She picked up the others for her knockout performance as Celie in the musical The Color Purple on Broadway in 2015.
Speaking after her Oscar nomination, she didn’t hold back. ‘It’s not enough that I’m the only one (black actor),’ she said.
How far away the streets of Stockwell must seem to Cynthia now. She and her younger sister , Stephanie, now a 30-year -old fitness instructor, were raised by their single mother, Edith, in a council flat.
There is some mystery over her father — her mother, a Nigerian-born health visitor, chose not to put his name on Cynthia’s birth certificate. Apparently, he walked out on the family when the girls were babies, and maintained intermit by tent contact as they grew up.
When Cynthia was 15, however, he announced one day at a Tube station that he didn’t want to see them again.
‘I don ’t know if that is a trauma,’ Cynthia has said, ‘and if it was, I learnt how to deal with it.’
Edith married Samuel Uregbula in 1992, when Cynthia was five, but the couple have since split up.
Her mum spotted her elder daughter’s talent when she was two, writing in a baby book that her firstborn would one day be a singer and actress.
‘I don ’t know why she wrote that,’ Cynthia says, ‘but she said I hummed while I ate.’
At 11, Cynthia attended La Retraite Catholic School for Girls in Clapham Park, joined a youth drama group and sang in the choir at her Catholic church.
At 15, she took part in a Channel 4 reality show called Trust Me, I’m A Teenager. On leaving school, she studied music psychology at the University of East London.
At the end of her second year, she bumped into Rae McKen, a theatre director she had worked with in a youth production of Romeo and Juliet at the Young Vic in London. McK en suggested she should audition for RADA — and she got in.
To pay her way through drama school, she worked for the shirt company Thomas Pink.
‘Just as I was about to graduate, I was offered the role of womenswear specialist and I thought: “I could stay here.” I had a pension and all that stuff. The easiest thing to do was stay.’
BUT she took the plunge instead, and graduated from RAD A in 2011. After that, various theatre roles followed, including in The Color Purple in London.
A solid, if not remarkable, career beckoned — until the fates inter - vened. In 2014, Cynthia won the starring role in Simon Cowell’s
West End musical I Can ’t Sing!, based on The X Factor. She played Chenice, a shy working- class singer who becomes famous after win - ning a talent show.
The show was pulled after just seven weeks but everyone agreed that Cynthia was a star in the making.
Less than a year later , she landed the lead role in The Color Purple on Broadway and everyone was blown away by her performance.
When she won her T ony in 2016, she choked back tears as she pointed to her mum in the audience and said: ‘Hi, Mummy , look!’ Back in Britain, however, she remained virtually unknown.
This month, Cynthia will appear in supernatural thriller The Outsider on the U.S. channel HBO, and later this year she portrays Aretha Franklin — one of her heroines — in the National Geographic Genius series, also on HBO.
Now she is already looking at bigger things. ‘I want to be able to do the Tom Cruise roles,’ she says. ‘The superhero roles.’