Gugu Mbatha-Raw

Gugulethu Sophia Mbatha-Raw MBE born 21 April 1983 is a British actress. She began acting at the National Youth Theatre and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and gained acclaim for her roles as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and Octavia in Anthony and Cleopatra in 2005 at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester. She made her West End and Broadway debut portraying Ophelia in Hamlet in 2009. For her role as the titular character in Jessica Swale's 2015 play Nell Gwynn, she received an Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actress nomination.

Quotes

• "Even though it’s a TV show, these issues are very real and there’s a real potential for healing when you get to see those stories."
• "If you’ve been through something like that, you get to see something outside of yourself and maybe have a perspective on it that allows you to talk about it with somebody or digest it in a certain way.”
• “You can’t really underestimate the power of that to make people feel less alone or to help in the healing process.”
• “That’s what life is like: it’s never black and white. I think so often drama sort of glosses over the difficulty of these situations."
• "The question with beauty pageants is what your background is, what your motivation is and whether that can represent freedom for you or others, or represent a stepping stone to a bigger life.”
• " I think sometimes when you bring down big complex issues and big conflicts to just two people in a room, people start to understand each other.”
• “There’s a long way to go before we have complete equality and we need films like this to push us along and to remind us of the legacy of the women who came before us. Hopefully, it will inspire young women to keep fighting for a better future.”
• By Isabelle Truman, https://graziamagazine.com/articles/gugu-mbatha-raw-interview/