Black and pretending to be white
English actress Rebecca Hall, who writes and directs Passing, has grappled with her identity as a mixed-race woman who many assume is white
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Alison De Souza In Los Angeles, Alison de Souza
One of the films getting Oscar buzz is Passing, the story of a light-skinned black woman who is "passing", or pretending to be white, in 1920s New York.
Starring Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson, it was written and directed by English actress Rebecca Hall, whose late maternal grandfather, Norman Isaac Ewing, routinely hid his African-American heritage and "passed" as white, as did Hall's mother.
