Naomi Ackie returns to the silver screen in a new thrilling narrative by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho.
In Mickey 17, she stars alongside Robert Pattinson, who plays the lead role of Mickey Barnes.
The film centres around Mickey, a dispensable worker on a colonial mission to an icy planet named Niflheim. His job on the colony ship involves undertaking perilous tasks, only to be cloned each time he perishes.
Ackie takes on the role of security agent Nasha Barridge, who initiates a romance with the first version of Mickey and remains loyal through his multiple lives.
While many cinema-goers may recognise her from Zoe Kravitz’s 2024 thriller Blink Twice, Ackie has enjoyed a diverse career since 2015.
Ackie’s breakout role was in Netflix’s The End of the F****** World (Image: CHANNEL 4)
Born and bred in London, the 32-year-old actress graduated from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 2014. She secured her first professional TV role on Doctor Who in 2015 and appeared in her debut film Lady Macbeth a year later.
The 2016 period drama saw Ackie, then just 24, starring alongside renowned actors such as Florence Pugh and Cosmo Jarvis. In 2019, the Londoner achieved her breakthrough role in ‘s The End of the F****** World, which won her a BAFTA for Supporting Actress.
After her major success, Ackie played Jannah in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. She subsequently stepped into the role of Whitney Houston in the late superstar’s 2022 biopic, I Wanna Dance With Somebody.
Fans of the star will be thrilled to hear that Ackie is not hitting the brakes anytime soon. The actress is set to take the spotlight in a trio of forthcoming films: The Thursday Murder Club, Morning and I Love Boosters.
Ackie and Pattinson play love interests in Mickey 17 (Image: Warner Bros. Pictures)
As a veteran, Ackie recently divulged some exciting particulars about the latter movie, directed by Boots Riley who’s at the helm for his second feature film.
In an interview with Hero Magazine, alongside Robert Pattinson, she declared: “[…] the project I just got back from was with Boots Riley. It’s got Keke Palmer and Taylour Paige [in it] and it’s… mental.”
She further elaborated on the flick, stating: “The film is called I Love Boosters and it’s about this group of women who steal clothes from fancy stores and then sell them for cheap on the street. But obviously it has this surrealist, magic-realism element. I feel like my jobs are getting more and more chaotic and weird as I go on.”
Ackie has opened up about her experience with grief (Image: Andreas Rentz, Getty Images)
In terms of her personal life, Ackie has been candid about her brush with sorrow after her mother passed away from cancer, when the actress was merely 22 years old.
In a heartfelt exchange with The Telegraph, she confessed that her twenties were shrouded in a ‘fog’ due to the overwhelming grief.
“I felt like I was on the brink of life, ready to leap into it all. I’d just been on my first holiday with a friend, to New York. Then, suddenly, everything came to a halt. It just stopped. Nothing,” she reminisced.
Reflecting on that period, she admitted: “Looking back, I was in a fog for the rest of my 20s. I was working, I was trying to embrace all the experiences, but I can’t remember a lot of it. There was a sense of deferred emotion.”
The actress plans on postponing motherhood (Image: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images)
The rising star revealed her intentions to embrace motherhood later in life, candidly sharing: “I feel like I’m living my 20s in my 30s, which is why I don’t think I’ll have children – if I’m lucky enough to be able to – until my 40s.”
The actress has been vocal about postponing having children, as she previously told The Reporter in 2024: “[I’m] not ready to have my own child until I’m probably like 40… [It’s] actually good to know… that one day you can just look at a baby and think, ‘I want you.'”
She also reflected on the potential difficulties of conceiving at an advanced age, adding, “I know it’s bad the longer you wait, but I feel really intentional about wanting to be married for a few years before that happens.”
Despite her plans for the future, she humorously pointed out her current preparedness for responsibility by saying: “And I don’t own a home. I can’t even look after a f****** plant, mate. And can I keep my house tidy? No. I didn’t even make my bed before I left for L.A.”
Mickey 17 is out in cinemas now.