On the heels of her husband’s State of the Union speech, first lady Michelle Obama rallied supporters around a cause of her own Wednesday — her love of the Oscar-nominated film “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”
“We’re glad you’re here today to watch what I consider to be one of the most powerful and important movies that has been put out this year,” Obama told a group of middle- and high-school students from New Orleans and Washington, D.C., who visited the White House to view the film.
“It’s a movie that makes us all think deeply about the people we love in our lives who make us who we are. It shows us the strength of our communities, no matter what they look like,” she went on to say. “It shows us that those communities can give us the power to overcome any kind of obstacles. And it also tells a compelling story of poverty and devastation, but also of hope and love in the midst of some great challenges.”
But the first lady’s admiration of “Beasts” wasn’t just about the heartwarming characters in the film — a little girl named Hushpuppy and her father, Wink, living in the Louisiana bayou during a hurricane — but about the real-life Cinderella story of the actors who portrayed them.
“I don’t know if you all know the story — the world knows it — but Dwight never acted a day in his life. Never. Not one — no plays, no pageants, no nothing,” Obama said of baker-turned-actor, Dwight Henry, who played the role of Wink.
His story, Obama said, serves as an example of the adage “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
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article courtesy of TheHuffingtonPost.com
