Naomie Harris is ‘Miss Clean Living’
Naomie Harris is "Miss Clean Living".
The 40-year-old actress was "really scared" about playing a crack-addicted mother in ‘Moonlight’ because the character was so far removed to who she is in her everyday life, but says the experience has helped her "grow".
She said: "It was something that really scared me because I thought, ‘Will I be able to reach a character like this? Because here I am – I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t even drink coffee. I’m Miss Clean Living and I’m going to go to crack addiction. How am I going to reach that?’
"When you do, you find that you grow as a performer and that you grow as a human being as well. It’s a real gift."
Visa issues meant Naomie had to shoot all of her scenes – which spanned three time periods – in just three days, but she enjoyed the fact she had no downtime.
She told Total Film: "We weren’t shooting in sequence because we didn’t have the luxury of that.
"We were playing Older Paula, Younger Paula and Middle Paula. And so, that was gruelling.
"But it’s worth it. It was also incredibly liberating and fun because I’ve never played a character like this before.
"It’s nice because usually what happens on a film set is you have so much downtime and so much waiting in your trailer.
"What was really nice about this was I didn’t have any downtime whatsoever. IT was just, onto the next, onto the next, onto the next…"
And when it came to researching the role, the actress relied on YouTube because she was busy promoting ‘SPECTRE’.
She explained: "I was travelling all around the world. My greatest resource – and I think it’s an amazing mine of information – is YouTube. I did all my research on YouTube."
