Oscar star in demand
Mahershala Ali has said he turned down a number of big-budget projects after winning an Oscar. The actor, who collected a gong for Moonlight in 2016, said offers flooded in afterwards but he was instead drawn to a small character-driven film. Ali chose to star in new movie Green Book, set in the Deep South during segregation in the 1960s. He said: “I got involved with the project shortly after the awards season for Moonlight, I fortunately had opportunities come my way that I hadn’t up until that point, but projects that felt like they had extraordinary budgets and a different type of presence. “Green Book was initially a very small film but the characters really stood out.”