‘I see the world for what it is’:
actor Naomi Ackie’s rage-fuelled rising star
Starring as Whitney Houston catapulted Naomi Ackie to fame – and drove her to exhaustion. She tells Hayley Campbell about channelling anger, coping with grief, and why she’s drawn to the dark side of life
Photo by Simon Emmett
Naomi Ackie flexes her biceps and growls at the café table – then laughs at how ridiculous she’s being. She can’t believe this is her current fascination, but it is: what her body is capable of when she gives it what it needs. “It’s funny with exercise,” she says, rolling her eyes, “because I used to do it just to try to be skinny.” The 33-year-old British actor is embarrassed she fought it for so long – not knowing about the mental and emotional power, the real release that physical strength can deliver. “I feel like I’ve got a lot of energy rolling around in my body. I observe a lot, and I see a lot, and I feel a lot. I don’t say everything, so I have to get it out somewhere.”
Ackie never saw herself becoming one of those people who wear their Lycra to work so as not to lose precious minutes getting changed; the ones brave enough to walk into the weights room and freely lunge in front of the beefcakes. “I was scared for the longest time – I would sit by the machines. Now I really like the vibe of tapping into my masculine side, testing my strength and being around guys who are doing the same thing. It makes me feel grounded, and I cannot make good decisions if I’m not grounded.” This is what playing Whitney Houston in the 2022 biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody taught her – a blockbuster role that catapulted her on to tube posters and into the spotlight.
“That role pushed me to the edge, to the point where I was like, I have to change something,” she says, “otherwise I will shrink within this job, within this body, within the world.” She played Houston from the age of 19 until her death at 48, sometimes both ends of that timeline in the same day. “I was away from home, isolated in Boston for like seven months, and hungry – I lost about 30lb to get to the shape of Whitney.” And, she was playing a real person who everyone loved: it scared her. “I lost a lot of myself, and not because of the art of it. It was to do with me feeling under pressure and trying to not be hated by the world – I was a catastrophic thinker, thinking I was never going to work again.”
Read more at The Observer Magazine.
