Inside Mickey 17 star Naomi Ackie’s life from tragic loss to cancer to ‘mental’ new film

Naomi Ackie is back on the big screen in Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho’s new twisted tale.

Mickey 17 sees the actress starring opposite Robert Pattinson, who leads the cast the titular Mickey Barnes.

The thriller follows Mickey, a disposable employee on a colonial mission to an ice planet named Niflheim. His role on the colony ship is to take on deadly assignments, only to be cloned every time he dies.

Ackie portrays security agent Nasha Barridge, who sparks a romance with the first incarnation of Mickey and sticks by his side throughout his various lives.

While many moviegoers will recognise the film star from Zoe Kravitz’s 2024 thriller Blink Twice, Ackie has had a varied career dating back to 2015.

Born and raised in London, the 32-year-old actress graduated from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 2014.

She bagged her first professional TV role on Doctor Who in 2015 and later featured in her first film Lady Macbeth.

The 2016 period drama saw Ackie, who was just 24 at the time, starring opposite accomplished actors, including Florence Pugh and Cosmo Jarvis.

Three years later, the Londoner landed her breakout role in Netflix’s The End of the F****** World, which earned the TV star her first BAFTA for Supporting Actress.

Following her big break, Ackie portrayed Jannah in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. She then went on to fill the shoes of Whitney Houston in the late icon’s 2022 biopic, I Wanna Dance With Somebody.

Fortunately for her fans, the actress has no plans of slowing down just yet. Ackie is slated to star in three upcoming productions: The Thursday Murder Club, Morning and I Love Boosters.

The Netflix alum recently shared the details about the latter film, helmed by second-time director Boots Riley.

In a Hero Magazine interview, she told her co-star Robert Pattinson: “[…] 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.

” 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. “

Tragic loss

Ackie has opened up about her experiences with grief after losing her mother to cancer, when she was 22.

In a recent conversation with The Telegraph, she revealed that she spent her twenties in a ‘ fog ‘ after the devastating loss.

” 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 said.

” 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. “

She continued:” 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 Mickey 17 star has previously expressed her plan to delay motherhood until her 40s.

Back in 2024, she told The Hollywood Reporter:”]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 continued, acknowledging the risks of pregnancy in older age:” 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.

“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.

Source: Mirror