Chances are a lot of you may not know who Adepero Oduye is. She had a slight breakthrough with her leading turn in the frustratingly underrated 2011 film Pariah but it never made any waves. Hardly anybody saw it and the farthest the film got in the awards circuit was the Independent Spirit Awards, with a John Cassavetes Award win and a Best Female Lead nod for Oduye, who also got a shoutout from Meryl Streep at her Golden Globes speech when she won for The Iron Lady. Never hurts to get that kind of praise.
While other actresses like Felicity Jones and Elizabeth Olsen, who also had breakthroughs back in 2011, would go on to bigger things, Oduye hasn't gotten the kind of opportunities they have.
Since Pariah, she had a small role in 12 Years A Slave as the slave Eliza that the main character meets early on who has her children taken away from her. She also had another small role in The Big Short as a banker that Steve Carell's character works for. Both of those films were produced under Brad Pitt's production label Plan B. So because Hollywood is all about who you know, and Brad Pitt is never a bad person to collaborate with, perhaps he will give her a significant role for her to sink her teeth into.
On the horizon, she has the family drama The Dinner opposite Richard Gere, Rebecca Hall, and Laura Linney and directed by Oren Moverman who guided Woody Harrelson to an Oscar nomination for The Messenger. Also, she has the science fiction disaster film Geostorm opposite Gerard Butler and Abbie Cornish.
Recently, Disney announced that they'll be rebooting the 1991 cult classic The Rocketeer but with a black female lead. Personally, I think she would be a great choice for that and it could be the true "star is born" moment that Pariah should've been. Even if it doesn't get her Oscar nominated, at least people will try to learn how to pronounce her name.
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