SHEILA ATIM

The Underground Railroad star is making her own opportunities

Sheila Atim’s talents seem to have no boundaries. An actor, singer and composer (who is also trained in biomedical science), she made her professional acting debut at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2013 in Ché Walker’s

The Lightning Child, later composing the score for his play, Time Is Love. And this year sees Atim playing not only the Tooth Fairy, in Netflix’s The Irregulars, but the protagonist’s absentee mother in The Underground Railroad, a role she imbues with a similarly mythic presence. As Mabel, a character whose escape from a plantation has become practically legendary, she does wonders with little dialogue, conveying generations of matrilineal struggle. “The maternal aspects of their relationship was paramount from the beginning, in terms of things I was thinking about and trying to understand,” Atim reflects. “Mabel’s [story] is in the past, but creates such a driving force for Cora.”

While stage and screen acting come from the same place for Atim, she was interested in the power of the camera to capture “the in-between moments, the moments that are surrounding the dialogue that are just as important, and sometimes more.” She attributes the ability to push that type of physical performance to writer-director Barry Jenkins, who allowed the actors to push on the story through nuances of expression and movement. “He was often cutting lines, or finding ways to make scenes more streamlined, in order to leave moments where we could just be.” For Atim, this is vital: “particularly with this story — or any to do with oppression and brutality; sometimes that violence drowns people out, it washes away their identities. Having moments of stillness is really profound, as opposed to feeling like there always has to be some kind of violence for us to feel anything.”

The Underground Railroad is just the beginning of her journey — she will next be seen as a mixed martial artist named Bobbi in Halle Berry’s directorial debut,

Bruised. Seeing Berry at work spoke to the polymath artist. “As a young Black woman, that was a very poignant moment for me, watching her wear these two hats at the same time.” It only strengthened Atim’s resolve to keep exploring her numerous talents. “I’ve always been somebody who likes to do lots of things,” she says. ‘“What else is there? What else could I be doing right now?’ That’s a huge part of the plan.” If anything in Atim’s career is fixed — it’s that her star will continue to rise.

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IS ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEO NOW