Loving‘s Breakout Star Ruth Negga on the Role of a Lifetime

If, as expected, Ruth Negga, the breakout star of Loving, snags a best actress nomination, it will likely be met in some corners by furrowed brows and the question, ‘Who’s Ruth Negga?’

They’ll know soon enough. Predominantly a British stage actress who’s played Ophelia at the National Theatre and legendary singer Shirley Bassey in the 2011  BBC biopic Shirley, Negga was born in Addis Ababa to an Irish mother and an Ethiopian father and lived there until she was four before being raised in Limerick and London.

Oscar Watch: Designing the Look of Loving With the DP, Costumer & Production Designer

In telling the true story of a white man and his black wife, director Jeff Nichols nails the late fifties period with uncanny precision. His Oscar-buzzed Loving (opening wide Nov. 11) begins in 1958 when police arrest Richard and Mildred Loving at their own Virginia home in the middle of the night and throw them in jail for being a mixed race couple. Banished from Virginia, Richard and Mildred (played with slow-burn intensity by Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga) decide to fight back and eventually win a landmark 1967 Supreme Court case declaring all anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional.

Loving Featurette: The People Behind the Landmark Supreme Court Case

"Richard and Mildred Loving were two people that loved each other, and they didn't understand why the rest of the world couldn't see it," says writer/director Jeff Nichols about Loving, his film about the two people behind a landmark Supreme Court case that changed the country. The film follows Richard and Mildred's decision to wed, despite the fact that this was a violation of Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, known as the Racial Integrity Act of 1924,

This Proposal in Loving Will Break Your Heart

The emotional real life drama of Richard and Mildred Loving is destined to be the love story of the year. Loving portrays the couple’s romance that led to a 1967 Supreme Court victory overturning U.S. laws prohibiting interracial marriage. 

Focus Features released a tearjerking clip from the film today. Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga are way too adorable as the lovestruck couple. The one-two punch of Richard secretly buying the land for their future home and asking Mildred to marry him will be too much for your tear ducts to contain.