FOR TWO DECADES, THE ACTOR HAS BEEN BURNING UP BOTH SCREEN AND STAGE. BUT NOW, WITH AWARD NOMINATIONS COMING THICK AND FAST, SHE’S READY TO CONQUER THE WORLD

WORDS HANNA FLINT

Ruth Negga, photographed exclusively for Empire in the Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, on 10 December 2021.

PORTRAITS RAMONA ROSALES

Black top and skirt: Balenciaga.

RUTH NEGGA HAD A PROBLEM.

The ‘best friend’. She was sick of best friends.

As a young actor working in Ireland and London in the early 2000s, she was frustrated. Ireland was tough, but “London was harder”, she says. “Nothing ever was completely direct, but there was very much this idea that as a woman of colour, you go in for the best-friend role. It was unquestioned and I remember thinking, ‘This is fucking narrow.’ I don’t recall many people I met, you know, directors, thinking outside the box — it depressed me.”

So, on a mission to not play best friends, she found her own way, building a career that most actors, let alone women of colour, would covet. She won’t be typecast, won’t be constrained by one medium, embracing every film, TV or theatre role that tickles her fancy. Early supporting parts in Channel 4’s Misfits and Neil Jordan’s transgender drama Breakfast On Pluto established her as a force. Then, her scenestealing turn in comic-book series Preacher as the riotous Tulip O’Hare made her a fan-favourite for her fearlessly hot-headed take on what could have been just another generic love interest.

In 2016 she starred in Loving, Jeff Nichols’ historical drama about an interracial couple whose marriage changed American history.

Negga’s stunning turn as Mildred Loving introduced the civil-rights pioneer to a new generation. She earned Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for it — and has been nominated for another Golden Globe for last year’s Passing.

A film for which Negga did something unexpected: she played a best friend. But this was her choice. And on her own terms.

In Rebecca Hall’s directorial debut, Negga plays Clare, a biracial black woman in early 20th century America passing for white and married to Alexander Skarsgård’s well-to-do white racist. Negga, Hall (whose American grandfather was Black and passed for white) and co-star Tessa Thompson bring uncanny authenticity to an utterly compelling story of race, womanhood and female desire that is as relevant now as it was when author Nella Larsen wrote the 1929 novel.