Thandie Newton: Actress Talks 'RocknRolla' And Tackles Condoleezza Rice

By Jawn Murray, BlackVoices.com

Thandie Newton walked into my interview room at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in Toronto with style, sophistication and a hip-switch that was hypnotizing.

In a royal blue dress that hit every curve with perfection, it was almost as though she was channeling Vanessa Williams' character Wilhelmina Slater from 'Ugly Betty' before my very eyes.

The walk and the confidence was eerily similar to Newton's character "Stella" in Guy Ritchie's new crime drama 'RocknRolla.'

The 35-year-old actress, who won both Screen Actors Guild and British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards for her role in 'Crash,' said that she landed the part in Ritchie's best-reviewed movie ever, quite unconventionally.

The Gender Benders

The Gender Benders
BlackVoices.com takes an up-close and intimate look at how androgyny has crossed into mainstream entertainment culture via the work and depictions of transgendered people, transvestites, transsexuals, cross-dressers and gay icons. Sometimes dramatic, sometimes comedic, and often-times jarring, these gender-bending images leaves a lasting impression on all who bore witness. Take a gander.

Name: Flip Wilson
Profession: Actor/Comedian
Gender Bender: As the strong-looking, colorfully-dressed, flirtatious and outspoken Geraldine Jones, Wilson is credited with negotiating race and class bias by positively characterizing the average, working class black female.
Claim to Fame: After being featured on shows such as 'Laugh-In,' 'The Ed Sullivan Show' and 'The Tonight Show,' he landed his very own sketch variety show, which debuted on NBC in 1970.
Factoid: Flip Wilson was born Clerow Wilson, Jr. in Jersey City, NJ on December 8, 1933. On November 25, 1998 he succumbed to complications of liver cancer.

Name: Milton Berle
Profession: Actor/Comedian
Gender Bender: During his television heyday, "Uncle Miltie" (as many referred to him as) donned wigs and dresses during his slapstick comedy antics.
Claim to Fame: In 1948, NBC brought 'Texaco Star Theater' from radio to television, later naming Berle as the permanent host. The vaudevillian-styled show became a ratings hit, winning Emmy Awards after its first season.
Factoid: Milton Berle was born Mendel Berlinger in New York City on July 12, 1908. He passed away at the age of 93 on March 27, 2002.

Name: RuPaul
Profession: Singer/Actor/Drag Performer/Former Talk Show Host
Gender Bender: RuPaul, born RuPaul Andre Charles, became not only the first drag queen supermodel after signing a contract with M.A.C. cosmetics but he was also the first drag queen to have his own talk show.
Claim to Fame: At the height of the supermodel era, RuPaul released a dance/house album called 'Supermodel of the World' lead by the hit single 'Supermodel (You Better Work).' It became an MTV hit and topped the dance charts.
Factoid: On his 'Foxy Lady' album, he covered Diana Ross's 'Work That Body' and also appeared on her music video for the single, 'I Will Survive.'

Name: Wesley Snipes
Profession: Actor
Gender Bender: Snipes's character, "Noxeema Jackson," in 'To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar' is a drag queen who, along with fellow drag queens Vida Boheme and Chi-Chi, sets off on a road trip to Los Angeles only to have their car break down along the way.
Claim to Fame: Though his first movie was 'Wildcats' with Goldie Hawn, Snipes, made a name for himself in two popular black films of the early 90s, playing Nino Brown in 'New Jack City' and as Shadow Henderson in Spike Lee's 'Mo' Betta Blues.'
Factoid: Snipes holds a fifth degree black belt and also practices Capoeira, a Brazilian martial arts.

Name: Boy George
Profession: Singer/Songwriter
Gender Bender: Influenced by David Bowie and Iggy Pop, Boy George's androgynous look made him a stand-out in his group Culture Club.
Claim to Fame: Culture Club's 1983 debut, 'Kissing To Be Clever,' included the #1 song 'Do You Really Want To Hurt Me.'
Factoid: Boy George, real name: George Alan O'Dowd, later confessed to being bisexual and dating his Culture Club drummer Jon Moss for whom he wrote a great deal of his hit songs for.

Name: Sylvester
Profession: Musician/Drag Performer
Gender Bender: Sylvester got his start performing with a group of transvestites called The Cockettes in San Francisco. Record label pressure to reshape his image resulted in his reportedly showing up to meetings in full-on drag.
Claim to Fame: His first solo album, 'Step II,' which was released in 1978, earned him the name "The Queen of Disco" following the success of two disco classics, 'You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real),' and 'Dance (Disco Heat).'
Factoid: Before he passed away from complications due to AIDS, Sylvester (real name: Sylvester James) lived out one of his dreams, singing back-up for his idol Aretha Franklin on her album 'Who's Zoomin' Who?'

Name: Felicity Huffman
Profession: Actress
Gender Bender: As "Bree" in 'Transamerica,' Huffman plays a man-to-woman pre-operative transsexual who finds out that she has a son before her final surgical operation.
Claim to Fame: Huffman has gained popularity as the character Lynette Scavo on ABC's 'Desperate Housewives.'
Factoid: In 2005, Oprah Winfrey granted Felicity's "Wildest Dream" when she got to sing backup for her idol Tina Turner on Winfrey's talk show.

Name: Grace Jones
Profession: Model/Actress/Singer
Gender Bender: On the cover of her 1981 album, 'Nightclubbing,' Jones flaunted an androgynous look, with square-cut hair and a padded suit jacket, cigarette in mouth. Her height and overall new look was said to have influenced the cross-dressing movement of the 1980s.
Claim to Fame: Jones began her career as a model in New York and was once a muse to Andy Warhol. Her disco recordings were welcomed by a loyal gay following. Jones also appeared in 'Boomerang' as Helen Strangé.
Factoid: Jones was born in Spanish Town, Jamaica.

Name: Dustin Hoffman
Profession: Actor
Gender Bender: In 'Tootsie,' Hoffman played Michael Dorsey, an unemployed actor, who takes on the role of "Dorothy Michaels" a female soap opera actress and later falls in love with the show's leading actress.
Claim to Fame: Dustin Hoffman's first memorable role was in the 1967 film 'The Graduate' as a young college grad named Benjamin Braddock who gets himself into a messy situation by having an affair with a married woman and falling in love with her teenage daughter.
Factoid: In 1982, he reportedly wanted to play the title role in 'Gandhi,' but ended up signing up for 'Tootsie.' Oddly enough, he lost the Oscar for 'Tootsie' to Ben Kingsley who played Gandhi.

"It's never happened to me like this before," she began. "I met Guy before reading the script, which is unusual because you want to have the topic of the movie to talk about. But it just worked out that way. And we had a chat for an hour and that's it. He said, 'Next, I would love for you to read the script.' I said, 'Do you have it on you?' His assistant happened to have the script on him and he gave me the script. I read it there and then. Forty minutes later I called him on his mobile [phone], he was still walking towards his place of work, and I said, 'Yeah, I'm in.'

In 'RocknRolla' the married mother of two plays a stern, yet sexy, financial advisor.

Newton plays another tough broad when she takes on Condoleezza Rice in the upcoming movie, 'W.'

Does the London-born actress find similarities in the two powerful women?

"Interestingly enough, I don't know how powerful Condoleezza Rice was when she was National Security Advisor. That's the phase I'm playing, 2000 [to] 2004," she explained. "Obviously it's a much more complex answer I will need to give you. I didn't really attach any similarity between the two characters at all. I wanted to do this for the reasons you can imagine – great script, really lovely cast, I like very Guy much and London. I knew it would be a lot of fun making this film. Then Condoleezza Rice was more, deep breath, jump in and terrified. At the same time, enormously satisfying."

Despite her tough exterior in 'RocknRolla,' Newton was able to get loose in a dance scene with co-star Gerard Butler.

The hilarious gyrating jig was the idea of Ritchie, but Newton confessed that there was some improvising.

"[It was] half and half," she said about the routine. "You know what though, from looking at it, it looks like one take. I have a feeling it was the first take that we did cause it just worked. It was my first day shooting actually. I was like, 'what the hell?' Guy said, 'I want you to dance, but not dance.' Then he demonstrated and he's a very good dancer actually. He showed us what he wanted and it was this shimmying line dancing. For whatever reason I understood it straightaway."

With a body of work that includes roles in films like 'The Pursuit of Happyness,' 'Beloved,' 'The Chronicles of Riddick,' 'Mission: Impossible II,' 'Norbit' and 'Run Fatboy Run,' Newton credits changing her mindset about the lack of work for both American Black actors and Black British actors as to why she works consistently in Hollywood.

"It's a tricky one and I used to be quite bitter about it. Then it occurred to me not so long ago that really, you need to put more positive energy towards it. Moaning about it doesn't do anything. Its funny, when I was in my moaning phase, I was with a mate, an actor named Jason Isaacs actually. A Jewish-English actor, a handsome leading man who works. I was complaining, 'you all got period movies, there's no roles for me. That cuts out 50 percent of the work. It's f---ked up.' After he let me rant, 'cause he hadn't had a job in a year, he said, 'you know I wish I was an ethnic minority in this country.' Because as far as he was concerned I was doing incredibly well. Because I do, I work every year. It's amazing for any actor to get that kind of work, whether you are white or Black," she shared.

Newton, who is married to a white English writer/producer named Ol Parker, does not believe the oversight in diversity is always intentional.

"I think its very innocent half of the time and the people who are writing the material don't have any black friends. They just don't think about it. They need to be constantly reminded. I do this to my husband when he is writing -- he doesn't need to be reminded, but these could be multiracial. This role could be anything. When he was making his movie, it was a delight for him – it was a movie set in London – to reflect London the way that we see it, which is very multicultural. So rather than seeing it as this yoke and its really difficult, recognize the positives and just with that energy the positivity gives you keep going forward. Keep bringing in your friends. Keep reminding the casting people that this could be a role for a person of color or whatever. Just encourage people to look outside of their small community," she explained.

The sometimes TV actress – against the judgment of her handlers she appeared on 13 episodes on the NBC drama 'ER' – Newton feels things have changed for the better since the beginning of the career.

"So different from ten years ago. My God, I was the only Black actress working in American movies. Me and Halle Berry were going up for the same roles. So it's changing a lot. Also in America at least, there's Black cinema now. There isn't that in England. The film industry is much smaller and it's really hard for anyone to work. It's key for us to celebrate the actors that are working and see how it's evolved in a positive way. To feel that the glass is half full and not half empty," she closed.