Emayatzy Corinealdi on Journey from 'Middle of Nowhere' to Brink of Stardom (Video)

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to sit down with Emayatzy Corinealdi, a 32-year-old actress whose talent and beauty completely bewitched me while when I watched Ava Duvernay's Middle of Nowhere, an indie that was shot in 19 days for less than $500,000 and premiered at January's Sundance Film Festival, where Duvernay was chosen by the jury as best director and Corinealdi took her first steps on the road to stardom.

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'Middle of Nowhere' Featurette: Sequence

The Cast and Crew of 'Middle of Nowhere'

VIDEO: The Cast and Crew of 'Middle of Nowhere'

Apparently I was not alone, as Corinealdi's performance as Ruby -- an intelligent and ambitious young woman whose husband winds up in jail for a long period of time, leaving her own life stuck in the middle of nowhere -- has recently received a barrage of acclaim. She won the best breakthrough actor Gotham Award over high-profile competition including Beasts of the Southern Wild star Quvenzhane Wallis -- five of that award's last eight winners went on to receive an Oscar nomination that same year -- and has also been nominated for the best actress Indie Spirit and NAACP Image awards.

The film, meanwhile, has been championed by an impressive roster of high-profile industry figures: Oscar-nominated actress Angela Bassett hosted its Los Angeles premiere; Oscar-nominated actresses Alfre Woodward and Diahann Carroll hosted another special screening of it; Oscar-nominated actress and honorary Oscar recipient Oprah Winfrey gushed about it over Twitter; and Sidney Poitier, the first African-American actor to win an Oscar, beamed in a photo with Corinealdi and her costar David Oyelowo at the Academy's Governors Awards.

Over the course of my conversation with Corinealdi -- the entirety of which you can watch at the top of this post -- we discussed a wide variety of topics. Among them: the story behind her unique name; her early training as an actor; why it meant so much to her to appear on the soap opera The Young and the Restless, one of her first credits; her big breakthrough at the 2010 American Black Film Festival; the present-day experience of an actor of color in Hollywood, and what Duvernay's African-American Film Releasing Movement (AFFRM) is doing to change it; her initial audition for Middle of Nowhere, at which she read for the part of the supporting part of Ruby's sister; the incredible way in which she found out that she'd landed the role of Ruby; the research that she did to prepare to play the wife of an incarcerated man (including reaching out to several women who have stood by a husband during a jail term); her history with the actor who plays her husband, Omari Hardwick; what she makes of the opportunities and accolades that the film has brought to her; and what sort of a career she hopes to have in the years ahead.

Emayatzy Corinealdi's name is pronounced Emma-yahtzee Core-nal-dee. I'm confident that she's going to be a major force in the world of film for a long time, so you'll have to learn it sooner or later.