The 'Moonlight' actress opens up on her difficult childhood, suffering from bullying at school because of her health issue and going through a long recovery after a major surgery.
- Sep 23, 2023
AceShowbiz - Naomie Harris was harassed at school for having a potentially deadly form of scoliosis. The Eve Moneypenny actress, 47, battled spinal curvature so severe she had to wear a correctional brace and said it made her stick out from other kids in her classes before it was fixed with a horrifying operation.
"I was bullied at school. I wore a brace because I had scoliosis, so I stood out," she told The Times newspaper about the condition - which doctors warned her could have claimed her life.
"And I was on a TV show (1987's 'Simon and the Witch' on the BBC), which most kids watched, so when I went to secondary school I was well known - and that made me a target too."
Naomie - who was nominated for an Oscar for her role in "Moonlight" - added about struggling with the condition after a life-saving operation to correct her vertebrae alignment, "Learning to walk again was intense. In a scoliosis operation they cut through all the muscles in your back and open you up to get to your spine."
"I had a rib removed to decompress my lung. It's major surgery. I had it because they said, 'As you get older, your ribcage is going to press more into the lungs. You're not going to be able to breathe, then you're going to die.' After the operation I had to learn to walk again, how to sit up, everything."
The actress, who played Eve Moneypenny in three James Bond films, said her feelings of alienation continued when she went to college due to being black. She added, "As one of only two black people in my Cambridge college I felt like an outsider."
"Coming from a state school to an environment where 80 per cent of the people were privately educated was a massive culture shock for me. I do think things have really changed at Cambridge, but when I went it was incredibly alienating."
