Page 67 - Powerlist 2019 - Digital Edition

NEW Thandie Newton These days, the headlines talk about a “raging beauty” Media, Publishing & Entertainment
2019 determined to strip bare these Hollywood truths – like the
Actress
director who asked her to act provocatively with a camera
for an audition and then, she later discovered, played that
It’s been more than 25 years since Thandie Newton first tape to friends at parties. Or the “Mr Hideous” who was
appeared on our movie screens, as the Ugandan-British sexually abusive during their relationship.
schoolgirl in the 1991 coming-of-age film Flirting. She tells interviewers she spends half the year acting
Track to 2018 and Thandie is an Emmy and Bafta- and half “campaigning and protecting and being in flash
winning, Golden Globe-nominated star of blockbusting mobs in front of the Houses of Parliament, or working in
films including Solo: A Star Wars Story, Crash, Half of a the Congo”.
Yellow Sun and The Pursuit of Happyness, and acclaimed She says her latest role, as Westworld’s Maeve – a
TV dramas ER, Line of Duty and Westworld. “badass” brothel madam in a Wild West theme park
In September she won an Emmy Award for peopled by androids – allows her to mix her activisim
Outstanding Supporting Actress in Drama for her role and acting.
in Westworld. At first, the character seemed stereotypical, objectified,
More than that, Thandie is an impassioned force for but then she has a powerful moment of empowerment.
change in an industry that for too long has traded on “I knew the whole arc,” says Thandie.
a culture, as she puts it, of “abuse and exploitation”. “And I knew it was incredible.”

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