Quvenzhane Wallis

Quvenzhané Wallis was born on August 28, 2003 in Houma, Louisiana, United States. Her mother is a teacher and her father is a truck driver, and she has three other siblings.

When he was only five years old, he appeared with his parents at the casting that the newcomer in the feature Benh Zeitlin had been doing for Bestias del sur savage . As the minimum age for the leading role in this tender fable but with apocalyptic overtones was six years old, they lied about how old the little girl was. Zeitlin explained to me that “it was a 9-month search, and we got to see 4,000 girls”, but that “even if we had seen 10,000 girls, it would have ended up being Quvenzhané Wallis, Hushpuppy was her, it’s like she was born to act”.

Indeed, the naturalness of this girl and her peculiar story in The Bathtub, motherless and with her father, surprises – Dwight Henry, another non-professional actor – seriously ill, managing alone in a scenario that invites you to think that the world is ending, or almost. Of course, the academics of Hollywood have surrendered to the strength of the little heroine, the mixture of fragility and greatness of spirit supported by the myths that she has heard in school, and they have made history by nominating her for an Oscar for best leading actress, becoming thus in the youngest to hold such an honor, nine years old at the time the news was made public. Since its first screening at Sundance in early 2012, the award-winning film has dazzled everywhere it has been screened, including Cannes, where it won the Caméra d’Or.

Was a little great actress born? Will there be continuity in her career? At the moment Quvenzhané Wallis has taken part in a short, Boneshaker , but above all he stands out in the new film by Steve McQueen (II) Twelve Years a Slave , which addresses the issue of slavery, fashionable in the United States after Lincoln and Django Unchained .