Flashes of fantasy punctuate Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire.
The main character, Precious, played by Gabourey Sidibe, escapes the bleakness of her life — an urban nightmare of sexual abuse, physical abuse, illiteracy and poverty — by imagining herself a movie star, beaming at flashbulbs on the red carpet.
That fantasy may be Precious' delusion, but it's Sidibe's reality.
Before starring in the film and garnering accolades that will likely take her all the way the Oscars, the 26-year-old was a self-described "random girl from Harlem" with no acting aspirations and no expectations beyond a "mediocre" life.
Sidibe (who goes by "Gabby") is not Precious — not by a long shot. She is bubbly, intelligent and fun. But her sudden fame is nearly as unlikely as Precious' daydreaming.
"It's too freaky, it's too surreal," Lee Daniels, director of Precious, says. "It still affects me that America and Hollywood — the world — has embraced Precious and she's walking on the red carpet. The first time it happened, I literally broke down crying at Cannes."
But there she is on The Oprah Winfrey Show, chatting with Regis Philbin, accepting an honour for breakthrough performance at the National Board of Review Awards and attending the Golden Globes where she was nominated for best actress in a drama: an overweight young woman with no acting training who, as she says, "could very well work at Wal-Mart", on the same turf as the glamorous and the dashing.
"There's more of me in the world than there are of Reese Witherspoon," says Sidibe, "but that's not reflected at these events. So I'm doing it for the rest that are like me. I'm doing it for those people."
A lot of regular people, if they were thrust into such a role, would have difficulty handling it, but Sidibe has looked very much like she belongs. At the NBR Awards, she ended her acceptance speech by confidently announcing, "George Clooney, let's get a drink."
Growing pains
"I don't try to live up to the standards of Hollywood or any of that," she says. "I know that I'm different and I celebrate it. In a weird way, I kind of really, really love being the alien in the room. I dig it."
Sidibe was born in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn and raised in Harlem. Her mother, Alice Tan Ridley, is an R&B and gospel singer who has frequently performed around New York. Sidibe is a singer, too, but never performed with her mum.
Instead, she wanted to be a therapist. She grew up watching Growing Pains and liked how Alan Thicke's character (a therapist) worked from his office at home.
"I certainly thought that I'd live my life wearing sneakers to the office and then changing into pumps at my desk and carrying around a briefcase, possibly filled with papers and possibly filled with Butterfingers," she says.
Sidibe performed in small parts in a handful of college productions: Peter Pan, The Wiz, The Vagina Monologues. But her focus was psychology, which she was majoring in while attending college at Manhattan Community College, City College of New York and Mercy College. She was returning from a school break when a friend told her about the audition for Precious. She was hesitant to go, but her friend and mother urged her.
So about two years ago, she skipped school to audition on a Monday, was called back on Tuesday to meet with Daniels and was cast on Wednesday.
‘She's No alien'
"Don't let Gabby fool you," Daniels says. "She knows that she's no alien — that's what makes her so beautiful. Gabby is so confident and so secure with who she is and what she represents that it's empowering to girls like her."
The film's long journey from the Sundance Film Festival to the Cannes Film Festival, then to the Toronto Film Festival and through award season might have been enough time to make adoring audiences routine for Sidibe. But she says, "I'm not adjusting to it. I really like being different."
Her performance has been hailed for its honesty, its fearlessness and its rawness. Ellen Burstyn, introducing her at the NBR Awards, said Sidibe possessed "talent, intelligence, sensitivity and confidence".
"You can, if you set your sights very low, become rich and famous in no time at all," Burstyn told the young actress. "But if you want to set your sights high and you want to fulfil your potential completely as a human being and an artist, then those four gifts are just the beginning."
Sidibe, a big woman with an infectious smile, makes no claims of eloquence, took the stage and told Burstyn: "You are just awesome."
Sidibe avoided the acting bug for most of her life, but says she found it on either the third or fourth day of shooting Precious — when she realised she could boss around a male model playing a small part in the film.
She's just shot a Sundance Lab film titled Yelling to the Sky, and a pilot called The Big C that stars Laura Linney and has just been picked up by US network Showtime.
As for the Academy Awards, Sidibe didn't grow up watching them much. A huge pop fan, she tuned in to see 'N Sync perform in 2001. And she caught the acceptance speeches of Halle Berry and Jennifer Hudson, too.
But she says, knowing she'll likely have a front-row seat, "I'll be watching this year, though."
