Fast five with Alexandra Shipp

Meet the newcomer who has replaced Halle Berry as the new Storm in X-Men: Apocalpyse?

May 18, 2016 06:00 am

1 EARLY START

Alexandra Shipp was acting in plays by the age of 10, after encouragement from her mother to invest her excessive energy in the theatre.

She moved to Los Angeles at 17 and quickly made her film debut with a minor role in 2009's Alvin And The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.

She achieved small-screen fame for her lead role as KT Rush in Nickelodeon's 2013 mystery series House Of Anubis.

2 A DIFFERENT TUNE

The 24-year-old is quite the musician, too. Her first lead role in a film, 2014's Drumline: A New Beat, required her to go through weeks of training to play an aspiring drummer in a university marching band.

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In the same year, she portrayed the late US R&B singer Aaliyah in Lifetime's biopic Aaliyah: The Princess Of R&B - and even sang all of her songs in it.

3 STAR INFLUENCE

It seems almost meant to be that Shipp inherited the role of X-Men superhero Storm from actress Halle Berry, who played the role in previous X-Men movies.

Both biracial beauties have Caucasian mothers and African-American fathers, and Berry is also Shipp's biggest idol.

The latest instalment,X-Men: Apocalypse, opens here tomorrow.

4 A DARKER STORM

The mohawk that the actress sported as Storm is already an indication that Shipp's younger, darker and "really messed up" version is quite different from Berry's portrayal.

"The only mutants she knows are bad mutants," Shipp told film website Collider.

"You're seeing kind of a little bit of where she comes from. You're seeing all the pain that she's gone through."

5 MARVEL MASH-UP

Comic book fans will be pleased to know that Shipp is interested in appearing in a spin-off of Captain America: Civil War star Chadwick Boseman's 2018 movie Black Panther, as Storm marries the titular character in the source material.

"I've got, like, a pitch. I'm coming up with a vision board. I want this movie to happen," she joked on The Lowdown with Diana Madison.

"Honestly, it doesn't have to be me (playing Storm)... As a fan, I just want that movie made."

FACT FILE

NAME Alexandra Shipp

BORN July 16, 1991, in Phoenix, Arizona, USA

FILMOGRAPHY Alvin And The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (2009), Aaliyah: The Princess Of R&B (2014), Straight Outta Compton (2015), X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)