Laura Harrier "wouldn’t be an actor" if it weren’t for Spike Lee.
The 29-year-old actress has praised her ‘BlacKkKlansman’ director for his visionary work and career, in particular for promoting "black people’s stories".
She told Britain’s Marie Claire magazine: "[‘BlacKkKlansman’] has definitely changed my life and working with Spike was one of the biggest opportunities I could have wished for. I’ve admired him and his work my whole life. He’s shaped American filmmaking, he’s shaped black filmmaking. I wouldn’t be an actor if it weren’t for him – he’s put people that looked like me on screen in such a wider space than anyone did before and he’s told black people’s stories since the beginning.
"I saw ‘Do the Right Thing’ when I was a kid and watched a bunch of his movies in high school.
"He was the first person who made me understand what an auteur really is."
Laura now wants to work on a romantic comedy because she doesn’t think she’s typical of the lead actress usually featured in such films.
She said: "I want to do romantic comedies and other films in which you don’t see people who look like me, movies where you’ve never really seen people who don’t look like Kate Hudson.
"I don’t know what people’s thought process was when they believed that audiences couldn’t connect to seeing people of colour falling in love."
And the ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ actress is working on developing her own projects to make that happen.
Asked if she’d consider writing or producing, she said: "Yes, definitely. That’s something I’m working on now. I’m developing some adaptations of books. I can’t say anything more about them at this point, but I’m going to make sure I get my romantic comedy moment."
Laura Harrier owes career to Spike Lee
