The Brit star brought up by single mum who’s on brink of Oscar glory
SHE’S a North London girl brought up by a single mother – and now Naomie Harris is an Oscar hopeful.
Fittingly, the 40-year-old was with the woman who’s played such a vital role in her life when news of her best supporting actress nomination came through yesterday.
Harris, who plays Miss Moneypenny to Daniel Craig’s James Bond, had arranged to be at home to be with her family, including mum Carmen, as the nominations were announced.
‘I was so preparing not to hear my name that I feel a bit numb to be honest,’ said Harris, who is recognised for the film Moonlight, in which she plays a heroin addict trying to raise a son on her own.
‘I was with my mum. I was too nervous to watch the whole announcement and I couldn’t be on my own. I was shouting that I couldn’t cope with the tension and in any case I didn’t think I was going to be nominated.
‘I just sat with my mum and then my brother Max called, “You’ve been nominated”. I found out in the best way possible.’
There was something deeply moving about Harris’s nomination. She needed to share the news, good or bad, with her mother, the woman who worked all hours and all manner of jobs in Harris’s early years to put food on the table.
Reflecting on her remarkable rise, Harris said: ‘My mum has always been here for me and I will always be there for her.’
Carmen, a former screenwriter on EastEnders and Grange Hill, raised her to be resilient. ‘She raised me on her own. We had nothing and my mum put herself through college to get a sociology degree,’ Harris has said.
Now, mother and daughter live just down the road from each other in North London. ‘I sometimes put a coat over my pyjamas and go and visit her some mornings,’ the actress confided.
Her mother and father had been dating for three years but when Carmen became pregnant at 19, he left. The Jamaicanborn mother was left to raise Naomie alone, studying for her degree in sociology once her daughter was in primary school.
Carmen then began a writing career, penning scripts for EastEnders under the pseudonym Liselle Kayla. She is now a faith healer and lives in Muswell Hill with her longterm partner, Richard Tharp, with whom she has two children, Max and Joely.
Naomie’s acting talents were noticed early on, and her mother chose to enrol her at the Anna Scher stage school in Islington when she was nine.
She attended St Marylebone School for Girls, a Church of England comprehensive school. After finishing her A-levels, she went on to study social and political sciences at Cambridge University, and later trained as an actress at the Old Vic Theatre School in Bristol.
Harris, who has appeared in dramas such as 28 Days Later and Pirates Of The Caribbean, joined the James Bond family six years ago when she was cast as Miss Moneypenny by director Sam Mendes.
When she started filming her first 007, Skyfall, people were not encouraging. ‘They said, “Aren’t you scared of the curse of the Bond girl, or Bond woman? Isn’t your career going to go downhill?” ’
She added that she was flabbergasted to hear such comments, particularly after seeing the success actresses such as Rosamund Pike and Gemma Arterton have enjoyed since appearing in Bond movies.
‘There have been so many Bond women who are still standing tall and have done great things,’ she said. ‘I have an Oscar nomination so now it’s true that it certainly isn’t no curse to be part of the Bond franchise for any woman.’
She was one of a host of British stars whose nominations mean they’ll be heading off to Los Angeles next month for the glittering awards ceremony.
Among them is Andrew Garfield, in the running for a leading actor Oscar for his role as an army medic in Mel Gibson’s film Hacksaw Ridge. Dev Patel, from Rayners Lane in North-West London, is also up for best supporting actor in Lion.
Others in his category included: Mahershala Ali in Moonlight, which opens in the UK on Febru- ary 10, Jeff Bridges in Hell Or High Water and Michael Shannon in Nocturnal Animals.
Last year there were protests over what was perceived as the Oscars being ‘So White’ after no non-white actors were nominated. This year seven actors of colour were nominated including Denzel Washington, Viola Davis, and London-based Irish-Ethiopian actress Ruth Negga who received a best actress nomination for the film Loving.
Lion was produced by Emile Sherman and Iain Canning, two of the producers behind Oscar-winning The King’s Speech.
Other nominations received by British talent include designers Stuart Craig and Anna Pinnock for their design work on Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, and costume designer Joanna Johnston for the clothes she created for the film Allied.
London’s ITN Productions was nominated for best documentary short subject for the film Watani: My Homeland.
Harris faces strong competition in her category from Viola Davis (Fences), Octavia Spencer (Hidden Figures), Michelle Williams (Manchester By The Sea) and Nicole Kidman (Lion).
Kidman said Lion, in which she plays a woman from Tasmania who adopts a young boy from India, has ‘gone global’. She added: ‘It’s about a simple family who help out these boys and adopt them. One of the boys grows up and uses Google maps to find his real mum in India. It’s a simple heartfelt story.’