1. Gugu Mbatha-Raw, a classically trained actress from Oxford, stomped onto the scene in America when J.J. Abrams noticed her and cast her in the short-lived 2010 NBC series Undercovers.
2. She was a badass spy in the vein of Abrams' previous serious Alias.
3. So she got to stun in flawless dresses at galas while doing "sexpionage."
4. She even stunned Boris Kodjoe with her low-key slaying.
5. Gugu was stunting in white on white on white long before Olivia Pope.
6. She even slaughtered that iconic Alias Super Bowl episode scene.
7. Her breakthrough film role was in Belle (2013), a game-changing romance about a mix-raced woman in the Jane Austen era.
8. She picked the role of Belle because she cares about the representations of women and race in film.
9. She had you saying, "Elizabeth Bennett who, tho?"
10. Gugu's latest movie is Gina Prince-Bythewood's Beyond the Lights, where she beautifully plays Noni Jean, a damaged pop star looking for redemption.
11. She can also sing and she's amazing in "Masterpiece," a music video tied to the film's release.
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12. She gives you "she's so lucky, she's a star but she cry cry cries in her lonely heart" better than Britney Spears.
13. She just quietly slays while sipping champagne.
14. She slithers about a banquet table like she's Voldermort's fucking Horcrux.
15. She frolics about the beach and watches every Nicholas Sparks movie drown from how much she is slaying the romance movie game.
16. And last not but least, she put the final nail in the print industry’s coffin with this mind-blowing, never-to-be-topped cover of Elle.
Let Gugu hand you every inch of your life in Beyond the Lights, in theaters Nov. 14.
