Actress Gabourey Sidibe catapulted from college plays to the big screen when director Lee
Daniels hired her to star in the 2009 film Precious.
Since then, she's had a vibrant career and served as a great role model for plus-size
women.
Today, she's confident in herself and comfortable in her own skin, but it took a long time for
her to get there.
Let's take a look at her stunning transformation through the years.
Hard times
Gabourey MaLingair Sidibe was born on May 6, 1983 in Brooklyn, NY.
According to Nylon, her first name means "the one with the beautiful cheeks," and her middle
name means "my queen."
Entertainment is in Sidibe's blood.
Alice Tan Ridley, her mother, has been singing on subway platforms on the side for 30 years,
trying to build a career.
Ridley finally got featured on America's Got Talent at age 57, and made her first record
at age 63.
While Sidibe has singing talent herself, she initially wanted no part of show business.
In a 2015 interview with BuzzFeed, the actress said,
"Watching her struggle made me want to get a 9-to-5 job...I didn’t want to struggle.
I didn’t want to wonder where my next paycheck was coming from.”
Daddy issues
The actress told Nylon in 2017 that her father, Ibnou Sidibe, beat her and called her "fatso"
when she was young.
She admitted that her childhood gave her a lot of acting practice.
She told the magazine,
"I grew up pretending I was okay when I wasn't."
She admitted that she's long disregarded her father, and that she's tried to move on.
The little girl in her may still be upset, but she no longer believes she is a victim.
Dieting from the beginning
People magazine reported that she has battled her weight all her life, telling Oprah Winfrey
that her first diet was at age six.
Neither of her parents were emotionally supportive, and in fact, only contributed to her lack
of confidence.
Vulture covered her 2014 speech at the Ms. Foundation's Gloria Awards and Gala.
In it, she said,
"I got made fun of at home too, my older brother hated me, my dad just didn't understand me,
and my mom, who had been a fat girl at my age herself, understood me perfectly…"
Though her mom had the same weight problems, she berated Sidibe because she knew what she
was up against.
Unfortunately, this made Sidibe feel that, even at home, she was unsafe.
She swallowed her feelings by eating even more, sardonically noting,
"Nothing says, 'You hurt my feelings.
F--- you!' like eating a delicious cookie.
Cookies never hurt me."
Teens can be mean
When Sidibe appeared on Andy Cohen's Watch What Happens Live in 2016, a caller asked
for help because her adolescent daughter was being bullied in school due to being overweight.
Her answer?
Find out what she loves about herself and to keep it with her every time somebody bullies
her.
The way Sidibe got through her adolescent years?
“I knew every song on the radio, and so I sang a lot.
Older classes, like the senior girls, would come find me in school and have me sing their
favorite song, which is weird.
That’s kind of what I found that I liked about myself.”
Lessons from a s-- operator
In her 2017 book This Is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare Sidibe talks about how when she
was 21, her therapist at the time suggested she get a telemarketing job to pay the bills.
But, she says, for some reason, she took telemarketing to mean phone sex operator.
She recounted part of her story with Glamour.
Sidibe learned quickly that the job was really about keeping the callers on the line long
enough to ring up the bill.
She also had to pretend to be white on the phone, because, it was a rule that you were
not allowed to be any other race than white.
She says,
"According to what I had already seen at this company, the average talker was a plus-size
black woman.
That's right, white dudes!
You might think you're talking to Megan Fox, but you're actually talking to…well…me!"
After three years on the job, she learned a lot that would benefit her acting career.
She says,
"I took what I learned about secrets, shame, and pleasure, and applied it to the real world
around me."
Landing Precious
Sidibe had dabbled a little in acting, but
wasn't very serious about it.
Then she heard about the opportunity to play the part in the movie Precious, based on the
novel Push, by Sapphire.
Precious Jones is an obese, illiterate New York teenager who has had one child by her
father, and is pregnant with the second.
While not a happy story, it does become a more hopeful one.
And, one especially close to the heart, for a young actress with a real history of an
abusive father.
According to The New York Times, it had taken months to find the right person to play Precious,
and it was Sidibe, who showed up late but "blew everyone away."
She "cried real tears" in the audition.
Explaining her portrayal of the character, she told The Times,
"I kind of had in my mind that she wasn't the ugliest person in the room, but she felt
like she was."
Taking off
Sidibe has landed numerous plum roles since Precious.
She appeared on The Big C, several iterations of Ryan Murphy's American Horror Story, Difficult
People, and the 2011 movie Tower Heist.
She currently co-stars in the hot FOX series Empire as Becky, a one-time assistant at the
record company, who worked her way up to vice president of the company.
The Los Angeles Times wrote that the role was originally supposed to be a "boyish, petite
white girl," but Sidibe stole their hearts.
She told them,
"I enjoy the fact that out there is some little girl that is exactly like I was and she doesn't
see herself on TV.
She sees herself in me on Empire.
If it has to start with me, why not?"
Haters gonna hate
The actress continues to break barriers in Hollywood.
Sidibe's character Becky had a rooftop s-- scene on Empire in 2015.
It was treated matter of factly on the drama, but some people trashed her for it.
She regularly blogs about the show for Entertainment Weekly, and said,
"I keep hearing that people are ‘hating’ on it.
I’m not sure how anyone could hate on love but that’s okay.
You may have your memes.
Honestly, I’m at work too busy to check Twitter anyway.
#Booked."
Always a struggle
In Sidibe's 2017 book, she talks about her battle with depression, anxiety, and bulimia
after her parents divorced.
Radar Online published an excerpt from her book, where she said,
"The bulimia stuck around for about three years.
Throwing up made me feel high.
I felt a release around my head like a halo that made me feel lighter physically and emotionally."
She revealed to Nylon that she also struggled with panic attacks and depression, even contemplating
suicide.
Successful therapy helped change her life for the better.
But it's still not always easy.
The actress admitted to the magazine,
"I have been struggling with weight my entire life.
I realize that as long as I have a body, it will be a struggle."
Writing chops
Entertainment Weekly readers who check out her Empire blog or who read her Instagram
account know that Sidibe is also a talented and funny writer.
In 2017, the rest of the world discovered this, with the release of her memoir, This
Is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare.
When she announced in 2015 that she was working on the book, Sidibe shared in a statement
to Vulture,
"I've been writing since I was a child and have always had so many stories to tell that
are too long, shady, and impolite to share in interviews."
She has been compared to Mindy Kaling and David Sedaris.
Sidibe knows that she's got an amusing style, but notes in the book that we don't all have
the same sense of humor, and that if we did,
"We'd all be making out with each other all the time and we'd never get anything done."
Body war
Sidibe has said that she tried for years to lose the weight, but nothing stuck for good.
In 2017, she told People that she had undergone weight loss surgery the previous year.
She admits that the surgery was her savior.
She wouldn't have been able to lose the weight without it.
She told the magazine that she now works out regularly by swimming and riding a big tricycle,
has a nutritionist, and is eating better.
"It has taken me years to realize that what I was born with is all beautiful.
I did not get this surgery to be beautiful.
I did it so I can walk around comfortably in heels.
I want to do a cartwheel.
I want not to be in pain every time I walk up a flight of stairs."
While she made an intentional decision to keep the number of pounds dropped to herself,
she is significantly thinner than she was before the 2016 surgery.
She told the magazine after her surgery,
"I was in a war with my body for a long time.
If I'd started treating it better sooner, I wouldn't have spent so many years hating
myself.
But I love my body now."
The future is bright
Not only does Sidibe have a thriving acting and writing career, and is going on her very
first book tour for Try Not to Stare, she is trying her hand at directing.
In 2016, she helmed a short film called The Tale of Four, which gets its plotline from
the Nina Simone song ‘Four Women.’"
The actress continues to be a role model as she loses weight and ups her fitness level,
her sense of humor always shining through.
She told Nylon,
"Listen, I'm a solitary, selfish person...But I hear people tell me about how my struggles
have helped them, and I'm glad that my selfishness is helpful to someone else…I love my body
and I deserve love.
We all do, at any size."
It's hard to argue with somebody with so much life experience who isn't afraid to tell it
like it is.
Bravo, Sidibe.
We're with you every step of the way.
Thanks for watching!
Click the List icon to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Plus check out all this cool stuff we know you'll love, too!