Naomie Harris thanks Danny Boyle for ‘taking a chance’ on her as she collects OBE from the Queen

Naomie Harris praised Danny Boyle as she was appointed an OBE at Buckingham Palace.

The 40-year-old actress was honoured by the Queen for her services to drama at an investiture ceremony on Thursday.

She described the honour as “phenomenal” and credited her career to director Danny Boyle who she said ‘took a chance’ on her when she was starting out as an actress.

“This is really phenomenal,” she told reporters. “This is representing my country and being recognised for having made a contribution to the nation. It can’t get better than that.

“I credit so much to Danny Boyle. He really gave me a chance when nobody else would at the start of my career when I had no credits to my name.

“Then later on he gave me a part in Frankenstein at the National after having left drama school ten years before and not having done any theatre. He took a chance again and that’s how Bond happened.”

Harris said the Queen asked her about her upcoming projects and congratulated her on the success of her award winning film, Moonlight.

Speaking about meeting the monarch, Harris said: “I was impressed by how youthful she looked. She looked incredibly young and really healthy – and she has good skin.”

The OBE comes days before Harris will head to Los Angeles for the 89th Academy Awards where she will vie for the Best Supporting Actress gong for her role in Moonlight.

Harris plays a drug-addicted single mother in the Barry Jenkins directed hit which has already scooped gongs at the Writers Guild of America Awards and London Critics’ Circle Film Awards.

Harris said she never expected Moonlight to achieve the success it has, and thought it would only be her family and friends who would go to see it.

Speaking to Standard Online she said: “Barry always talks about how he was just making this movie for his friends and some family who would see it and that would be it,” she said.

“And that was the feeling on set, it was very low-budget, it was very intimate film-making, collaborative. But there wasn’t a sense that this was going to be seen by millions and millions of people and be a huge hit, not at all.”