Breaking into the mainstream.<\/p>\n
In Moonlight<\/em>, three actors play one character at three stages of his life. Alex R. Hibbert is Little, a quiet black boy, maybe eight, who drags his feet solitary, or runs to hide from bullies, around a poor Miami project; his mom is single and into drugs. Trevante Rhodes is Black, a grown man worked swole with a mouth full of gold and a soundtrack to match. And centred between them is Chiron, pronounced Shy-rone, the character\u2019s given name \u2014 mid-adolescent, he\u2019s played in vivid fight-flight-freeze, bullied for his beauty, an inability to camouflage himself like others, by the American actor Ashton Sanders.<\/p>\n What\u2019s remarkable about the triptych \u2014 each life-stage is marked a decade break between \u2014 is how consistent the acting is. Little, Chiron, and Black look alike. Their eyes stare, laugh, evade and long the same way. What\u2019s remarkable about that is that the actors, Hibbert, Rhodes and Sanders, didn\u2019t get to meet on set. They were sequestered from one another at writer-director, Barry Jenkins\u2019 behest. Sanders, now 21 years old and sitting with me in Sandy Kim\u2019s Downtown Los Angeles loft, credits the script and spirit for the uncanny likeness between the three Chirons. \u201cI feel like,\u201d he tells me, \u201cin some way our souls and our intuitions connected while filming without even knowing it.\u201d<\/p>\n Sanders has puppy proportioned hands and pupils that quiver. He\u2019s tall, graceful and wearing beige on forest green plaid. He says he loves fashion. He smokes. There\u2019s a treble to his being that reminds me of my dear friend Henry, who like Sanders, grew up in LA, acting. It\u2019s the treble of trust issues. \u201cIt\u2019s hard\u2014\u201d in Los Angeles, in show business, Sanders explains, \u201cto tell what people want or what their intentions are. You gotta keep shit tight.\u201d<\/p>\n Sanders grew up in Carson, a suburb of Los Angeles, where, he says, \u201cI was an other. I didn\u2019t have that many friends within my community.\u201d He was \u201cthe weird artistic kid\u201d. Thankfully, he went to high school downtown, at Grand Arts, also known as the Ramon C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts, a magnet public school with soaring space landing architecture that\u2019s been described, \u201clike its students,\u201d as, \u201csomething of a proud outcast: gangly, dreamy and beautiful at the same time.\u201d There, in his senior year, Sanders was assigned to make a dream board. \u201cWhere do you see yourself in ve years?\u201d was the prompt. \u201cA lot of the stuff on that board,\u201d the actor tells me, \u201chas come to pass.\u201d<\/p>\n Moonlight<\/em> is nominated for eight Academy Awards. It won Best Drama at the Golden Globes. There\u2019s a picture from that event of Sanders holding the trophy. He looks awkward, like he doesn\u2019t know what to do with his hands. In red carpet photos, he tends to cross his arms or throw peace signs. Today, his hands rest in his lap. His smile is natural, especially after we talk about his dogs \u2014 his cub-like Koda, his orange terrier Billy and his year-old pit bull Buddha, who, \u201craised around the little dogs, thinks he\u2019s small.\u201d <\/p>\n Sanders is most animated after I compliment his birth year: \u201cY\u2019all born in 1995 are advanced.\u201d He agrees: \u201cMy generation is definitely woke,\u201d he leans back as if to take it in. \u201cLook, it\u2019s like we\u2019re not from Earth. Thank you for seeing that.\u201d<\/p>\n Regarding Moonlight<\/em>, he\u2019s gracious, thanking skyward. The movie changed his life, like years of therapy. \u201cOne thing that Moonlight taught me,\u201d Sanders details, \u201cis to always be and love yourself yo. Chiron was a beautiful soul \u2014 so vulnerable. It\u2019s a scary thing to be too vulnerable. We are trained to walk around like… Like, when you put on a social mask to become somebody that you\u2019re not to accommodate society or certain people, it diminishes spirit. Be authentic.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Breaking into the mainstream.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":103482,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9416,9398],"tags":[11493,1105,11494,2675,8276],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n