Chiwetel Ejiofor: Trauma and success can coexist! Re-learning what being strong means

Happy Place

Fearne Cotton

Society & Culture, Mental Health, Health & Fitness, Relationships, Personal Journals

4.6 • 15.2K Ratings

🗓️ 17 February 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Are you able to balance being resilient with being vulnerable? Actor Chiwetel Ejiofor has spent time figuring out when to keep moving forward, and when to let painful emotions wash over him.

In this chat with Fearne, Chiwetel reflects on how a childhood trauma has shaped his character – everything from his fierce ambition to his optimistic outlook. He also reveals the moments self-doubt has almost proved insurmountable (including when he first got the script for 12 Years A Slave...!)

Plus, is ‘acceptance’ of your past ever truly possible, or is the simple realisation that life WILL go on regardless good enough? And, do you worry you’ve let your own life pass in a blur? Chiwetel explains how he’s learnt to live in the present.

Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy is out in UK cinemas now.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Fern Cotton and this is Happy Place, the show that questions what it means to be strong.
0:06.6	Today I'm chatting to Chirotau Edgier for.
0:09.7	You always want to have a kind of vulnerability, I think, and sometimes resilience or if you go
0:15.7	through hard things and you don't want to harden up and that's one of the things that I've
0:20.7	often tried to be careful of, that if you have that ability, you don't want to harden up. And that's one of the things that I've often tried to be careful of,
0:22.3	that if you have that ability, you can tap into that area of yourself and your psychology
0:28.1	that is like, I can struggle through this, I can deal with this, you know.
0:32.1	And you might know that you have that capacity.
0:34.1	But I think you also have to balance that sometimes with being vulnerable.
0:37.9	Because some of it is a cover for not wanting to feel pain again. Right, let me tell you about my day
0:44.1	when I went to meet Chimittal, who is in the new Bridget Jones film, Mad About the Boy,
0:49.9	which is out right now, by the way. Go and see it. It's really fun. I went to the screening
0:53.8	of this. It felt so luxurious because I went to the screening of this.
0:54.6	It felt so luxurious because I went to a screening in one of those cinemas where you get a comfy chair.
1:00.3	Is there anything better?
1:01.6	I hate normal cinema seats.
1:03.4	And I was sat next to Greg James, who's one of my old pals.
1:06.3	And we had such a lovely date.
1:07.4	And we went at about 1pm. When have I been to the cinema in the middle
1:12.8	of the day on like a Tuesday? Never is the answer. I loved every second of it. It was such a great
1:18.7	experience and it was, it's a really fun film. There's some bit, Hugh Grant made me laugh out loud
1:23.3	so many times. So when I saw the film, then went to Claridge's, darling. Claridge's Hotel,
	...

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