WGNO

Congrats (and a Wild Bill kiss) for Octavia Spencer: Oscar nominated for ‘The Shape of Water’

NEW ORLEANS – Congratulations, love and even a kiss for Octavia Spencer.

She’s been nominated for an Oscar for her supporting actress role in The Shape of Water.

WGNO News with a Twist features reporter Wild Bill Wood got the chance to chat (and give that kiss) to Octavia Spencer when she was in New Orleans filming the movie Black or White with Kevin Costner.

It all happened at House of Blues in New Orleans where Octavia Spencer was watching Kevin Costner perform with his band, Kevin Costner & Modern West.

Octavia Spencer is already an Academy Award winner for her role as Minny Jackson in the film, The Help.

That Oscar was for Best Supporting Actress.

And that’s what her nomination is for in The Shape of Water in which Octavia Spencer plays a janitor.

She got an Oscar nomination last year for playing mathematician Dorothy Vaughan in the film Hidden Figures.

Octavia Spencer was born in Montgomery, Alabama.

Her middle name is Lenora.

She got a bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts from Auburn and she got her big show business break working as an intern on the set of the movie The Long Walk Home.

You may remember that movie with Whoopi Goldberg.

In The Shape of Water, Octavia Spencer plays Zelda Fuller, a janitor in a facility that receives a strange kind of creature in a tank.

As Zelda, Octavia Spencer helps this creature escape from that tank and that’s the beginning of the movie that becomes a suspense-filled love story that has the most Oscar nominations this year.

The movie has thirteen nominations including the one for Octavia Spencer.