Oscar nominee Sophie Okonedo tackles the true tale of a black girl born to a white couple, but rejected as "coloured" in Skin. By Andrew L. Urban.
Her ordinary Afrikaner parents are shopkeepers serving the rural black community in apartheid-era South Africa. They lovingly raise her as their "white" little girl. But at the age of 10, brown-skinned Sandra Laing is driven out of white society as a "coloured". She then begins a 30-year journey that takes her from rejection to acceptance, betrayal to reconciliation, as she struggles to define her place in a fast-changing world.
If a writer invented this story, critics would pan it as absurdly incredible. But, as they say, truth is stranger than fiction, and this fact-based story is now told in the film Skin, out this Thursday and starring striking black English actress Sophie Okonedo. Co-writer Jessica Keyt was a teacher in South Africa when these events happened and has fed her experiences into the screenplay, to great effect.
Okonedo's range is extraordinary: she played the fragile young May in The Secret Life of Bees (2008), alongside Queen Latifah and Dakota Fanning and more recently the title role in the BBC production Winnie Mandela, delivering a powerful portrait of a figure large on the international political stage with a personality to match - Okonedo's favourite role to date.
It is therefore something of a cosmic convergence that she was cast as the black child of an Afrikaner couple in apartheid-era South Africa in Skin. Winnie would have been about 19 in 1955, when Sandra was born. Skin also stars New Zealand's Sam Neill as her father, Abraham, and Alice Krige as Sannie, her mother, both of whom are unaware of their latent black genes until her birth, a not common situation but not unique in South Africa.
"The biggest challenge for me," says Okonedo, "was the isolation of this character. She couldn't relate to anyone. To play someone who is shut down is a challenge."
But once she walked on set and the cameras rolled, Okonedo found that, as usual, "acting comes easily to me - once I get going it all just happens and I no longer feel tense; I'm free".
Okonedo played the female lead opposite Don Cheadle in Hotel Rwanda (2005), directed by Terry George. This exceptional film told the story of a heroic hotel owner who saved thousands of lives during the Rwanda genocide of the 90s. The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival where it won the People's Choice Award. Her performance earned her an Oscar nomination, a SAG nomination, a Critics Circle Award nomination and NAACP Image Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
In 2002 she starred as the prostitute, Juliette, in the award-winning British film Dirty Pretty Things alongside Audrey Tautou and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Sophie's portrayal of Juliette earned her a nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the Independent Film Awards in 2003.
Okonedo began her acting career on the stage: after graduating from London's famed Rada (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) she spent two years with the Royal Shakespeare Company and began her long running association with the Royal Court Theatre.
Actually, not quite: her very first foray into acting came after she answered a Royal Court Youth Theatre ad in Time Out seeking writers.
"I must have been about 16 and I just went along out of curiosity. I thought it would be nice to do something creative." She helped write a play and performed in it, and soon moved from the writers' group to the actors' group.
"Some years earlier I had been taken to a play which had a young black girl in it, and I remember thinking, 'Oh! Blacks can do that'. It must have planted a seed."
The story of Skin's Sandra Laing surfaced on BBC Radio 4 in July 2000, when journalist Peter White broadcast an interview with the real Sandra from South Africa. She was living in poverty, while her white family were comfortable. This interview prompted writer/director Anthony Fabian to make contact via Sandra's neighbours, who were the nearest to her with a phone.
Like most people, Okonedo had never heard this amazing story. "The fact that it happened during apartheid in South Africa is a double whammy."
And for all its dark undercurrents, Okonedo throroughly enjoyed the shoot, making firm friends with Sam Neill and his wife Noriko, who worked in the makeup department. "Sam is such a gentleman," Okonedo says.
Okonedo is not new to racial complications. Her Jewish mother, Joan, is a retired Pilates teacher; her Nigerian father Henry was a public servant. He left the family when Sophie was 5. Okonedo has a 13-year-old daughter, Aoife, from a relationship with Irish film editor Eoin Martin.
On her heritage, Sophie says: "I feel as proud to be Jewish as I feel to be black" and calls her daughter an "Irish Nigerian Jew".
Skin is out from Thursday at Bridgeway, Rialto and Matakana cinemas.
