Naomie Harris feels she’s been "over-represented" in roles with "negative stereotypes".
The 42-year-old actress has always tried her best to portray "positive representations" of black people, in particular, black women, and revealed that since the beginning of her career she’s refused to play roles which represent minorities in a harmful way.
Speaking at the GQ Heroes summit on Thursday (09.05.19) about her role in the Oscar-winning film ‘Moonlight’, in which she played Paula, a drug addict and mother to lead character Chiron (Ashton Sanders), she said: "I’ve always said that I will never play a kind of stereotypical black woman’s role.
"So I felt as a black woman I’d been far to over-represented in the role of prostitute and crack addict and these kinds of negative stereotypes, so I said I would never play a crack addict.
"I have always said from the beginning of my career that I only want to portray positive representations of black people in general and black woman in particular.
"So I made that very clear to my representation from the very, very beginning so I think they were really hesitant about coming to me with this script."
The ‘Skyfall’ star went on to explain that despite having her "reservations" upon reading the script for the 2016 drama, she was "moved" and thought it was a "beautiful story".
She said: "They said it’s by this filmmaker [Barry Jenkins] and he’s really incredible and we think the script is really incredible as well.
"I came to it with all these reservations I was like ‘I’m not gonna like this; this isn’t the kind of thing that I want to do’.
"But I read it and was welling up with tears and I was so moved by it and I thought it was such a beautiful story."
Naomie Harris feels ‘over-represented’ by ‘negative stereotypes’ in film
