If you like heart-warming show-biz success stories, you need to check out this account of how Gabourney Sidibe, a twenty-four-year-old sometime performer too level-headed to pursue an acting career full-time at the expense of a steady paycheck, won the leading role in the movie version of the poet-novelist Sapphire's Push at an open audition; it has everything but a big star breaking her leg just before the curtain goes up and Warner Baxter telling Ms. Sidibe that if she doesn't go out there and become a star, the finance company will repossess the prop man's daughter's braces. It's all the more resonant because Ms. Sidibe is a plus-sized African-American woman, which is to say that she's not someone who could have stormed Hollywood confident that there would at least be a surplus of available roles for which casting directors might deem her appropriate. "When she was younger," reporter Jake Mooney writes in The New York Times, "she was teased about her appearance. More recently, when she hung out with her theater friends, some other girl, taller or skinnier, always got all the attention. 'I was comic relief,' she said. 'The best friend.'" For hope and inspiration, she would turn to the example of Mo'Nique, "the plus-size actress and comedian. . . and pray to be like her." In Push, which will be directed by Lee Daniels (Shadowboxing), Mo'Nique will be playing Ms. Sidibe's mother. — Phil Nugent
