Cynthia Onyedinmanasu Chinasaokwu Erivo (born 8 January 1987) is an English actress, singer, and songwriter.
She is known for her performance as Celie in the Broadway revival of The Color Purple, for which she won the 2016 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical, the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, and the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Musical Performance in a Daytime Program, the latter two she shared with the rest of the cast.
Erivo ventured into films in 2018, with roles in the heist film Widows and the thriller Bad Times at the El Royale. In 2019, she portrayed abolitionist Harriet Tubman in the biopic Harriet, for which she earned nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Joining the likes of Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin as the next originally-animated Disney feature to achieve live-action-remake status, Pinocchio is getting a 'real boy' makeover in 2022.
And boy, are we excited. Based on Carlo Collodi's 1883 novel The Adventures of Pinocchio, both the 1940 animated version and the upcoming live-action version follow the story of Tuscan woodcarver Geppetto who wishes upon a star for a son which then sees a puppet he'd crafted come to life.
The puppet boy, Pinocchio, proceeds on a quest to become 'real' yet is met with challenges of truth and morality along the way. (Now's your cue, Jiminy Cricket!).
And if the teaser trailer - featuring Tom Hanks as Geppetto wishing upon a star and a visit from Cynthia Erivo as the Blue Fairy - is anything to go off, we're all in for a big nostalgia-inducing treat.
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