The UB Interview: Kimberly Elise Talks Natural Living, Minneapolis and Set it Off

Actress Kimberly Elise will celebrate her birthday later this week on April 17th. She was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Elise studied film and acting at the University of Minnesota and earned a BA in Mass Communications.

She’s best known for her roles in the films “Set It Off,” “Beloved,” “Almost Christmas,” “John Q” and “Diary of a Mad Black Woman.”

She has appeared on screen with Denzel Washington, Oprah Winfrey, Queen Latifah, Forest Whitaker, Cicely Tyson and Danny Glover, to name a few.

On television she’s starred in the VH1 drama “Hit The Floor,” as well as “Girlfriends” and “HawthoRNe.”

Kimberly is an award-winning film and television actress, with a career that spans over twenty-five years. A four-time NAACP Image Award winner and a Chicago Film Critics Award recipient.

As a vegan Kimberly advocates plant-based eating, as well as mindful, authentic living on her website KimberlyElise.com

Not only a beautiful spirited person, Kimberly is a conscious maven, holistic guru and has founded a natural hair care brand that supports her vegan lifestyle.

Kimberly Elise Naturals is a 4-step natural hair care system to Support and Empower textured hair – giving authentic visibility to women with curls and coils. Additionally, her Blog is a well curated space that shares amazing articles on health, wellness and clean living. She’s also published her own e-book on natural living and hair entitled “Curly Halo.”

Aries from UB spoke with MN native Kimberly Elise about starting out acting in Minneapolis, her first big role in Set it Off and why she started a natural living website.

Kimberly also shares with us, the most amazing acting experience she’s had and much more!

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UrbanBridgez.com: First let me say how honored I am to finally interview you. I’ve been a die-hard fan since Set It Off and that was largely due to the fact you’re from Minneapolis, MN and so am I. I’ve been so proud of your advancement in Hollywood since.
Kimberly Elise: Oh thank you! You’re from Minneapolis?

UrbanBridgez.com: Yes and I’m here now as we speak.
Kimberly Elise: You’re home, that’s nice. Thank you.

UrbanBridgez.com: Talk to us about your amazing website for natural living. What made you want to make your website all about that?
Kimberly Elise: Well it’s me and how I live for real. People are always asking me, what do you eat? How do you exercise? How do you take care of your hair? I love sharing information and sharing knowledge. Helping people achieve their goals, helping whoever I can. However it’s always been important to me not to thrust my opinions and lifestyle on people. So I just go about living my life and if you’re inspired, you can ask me and I’ll give you every bit of information that I know. So I said let me create a space where if people happen to go search for something like vegan deserts or hair products, they’ll find me. Rather than me throwing it out there in peoples faces. So I created the space, for people to find and come and learn as they want. It’s been really successful, it feels good to have this place for us particularly! It’s here to educate and enlighten people, on topics that are really directed to us. All done in a real positive way. I also thought that there needed to be more positivity on the internet. Particularly websites that have a lot of black faces on them, where it’s not about gossip and negativity. Just all of these things that brings us down. So I was like there needs to be a space, because the people I know are not like this. There needs to be a space, that represents who we are! Where you feel like if I land there, it’s gonna feel good. So I wanted that to be apart of the website as well.

UrbanBridgez.com: Well it’s a great website and really needed.
Kimberly Elise: Thank you so much!

UrbanBridgez.com: When did you know you wanted to be an actress and how did you begin to work on your skills?
Kimberly Elise: I always knew. I started acting professionally in my late teens. I was doing TV commercials, back in Minneapolis. Then later I started doing theater in Minneapolis, after I got out of college. I never really took an acting class. I learned it all while doing. I learned primarily on stage in south Minneapolis.

UrbanBridgez.com: With Set it Off being your first film, take us back to that experience and tell us what it was like being the “new” actress shooting that film?
Kimberly Elise: The whole experience was so surreal. It was a big process of getting the job. I had to do several auditions. Then when I first got it, I was just in a whole different league. That was surreal, but at the same time really wonderful. The ladies were great. They were all very kind especially Dana (Queen Latifah). The director F. Gary Gray was great and very supportive of me. So it was a wonderful overall experience. For one it was an achievement for me artistically. But also there were some hard times financially on my family. So it helped with me in supporting my family. So in all it was a really complex and exciting opportunity. It was more than just like a dream come true, it was like living up to your family responsibilities as well.

UrbanBridgez.com: What made you originally interested in the role on Hit The Floor?
Kimberly Elise: James Larosa and the script. He came to me and really wanted to create this show. And was interested in flushing out my character, this woman who comes into and sort of forced into a situation. Because the love of her daughter. He and I both wanted something that would challenge me and give me interest in ways that I haven’t been before. So he created this character that allowed me to really explore parts of my craft as an actress and a character representative that I hadn’t before. That’s what I’m always looking for, something fresh and new to allow me to do different things. He said you’re not going to be some mom making toast for the kids (laughs), he said it’s going to be a whole other thing. That’s what I wanted, not to be a mom making toast…that’s real life, I wanted a character (both laugh).

UrbanBridgez.com: You’ve done so many roles, if you had to pick one role that you enjoyed a little more than the others what would it be?
Kimberly Elise: I had a lot of fun doing Diary, that was really fun. It was fun for so many reasons. Again it was an opportunity to explore different things. Prior to it, I had just did The Manchurian Candidate and Woman Thou Art Loosed. Both of them were really heavy. This was something that was so much lighter and just fun! Then it was fun, because it was Tyler’s first big Hollywood film. So he didn’t know how the movie would do. He actually didn’t direct that movie, a lot of people think he did. It was actually directed by Darren Grant, so he can get the credit he deserves. But it was really fun, watching the experience through the eyes that it was so new to. Then to see how it all turned out, so to be apart of helping develop something like that for Tyler was great. But I also switch it at times like to my role in Almost Christmas. That was directed by David Talbert. With me Monique and Gabrielle Union, Keri Hilson and just an amazing cast. That was the funnest I’ve ever had making a movie! It was fun on steroids. I mean it was fun from the moment we got in the car in the morning, to go to the hair and make-up trailer, to rehearsals, between takes to shooting (laughs). We laughed so much and had so much joy. David creates a real open creative space where you’re just free to really be creative. Which is one of the things that I love about film making, is you really get to express yourself creatively. More than you can doing TV. So as of now, Almost Christmas is the most fun amazing experience I’ve had yet.

UrbanBridgez.com: When Kimberly wants to relax with some good music, who are some of your favorite artists you listen to?
Kimberly Elise: I have really eclectic taste. I like acoustic guitar. I like really simple melodies and very earthy voices. I love Ray Lamontagne and really love Spotify. Because I can type in something like acoustic winter and every song comes up related, including artist I’ve never heard of. These might not be the mainstream artists out there, but their music really touches my spirit.

UrbanBridgez.com: Anything else you want to share with your fans?
Kimberly Elise: Me and my daughter wrote an E-book on natural hair care. Again I put it out there because people are always asking how I take care of my hair. People that want to go natural ask how can they do it. I talk about that in the book, as well as what it’s like to be natural in Hollywood. So they can check that book out, it’s called Curly Halo. It’s named that, because so often black women have been taught that our hair is a curse. So to have this hair, what did we do wrong? In reality to me, it’s a great blessing. That we need to recognize and embrace it as such. It’s our curly halo.