Biopics often put the spotlight on larger-than-life icons. But for Kingsley Ben-Adir, the British actor who plays Jamaican reggae star Bob Marley in a new movie out Wednesday, telling a sweeping story about a legend was something that he — and Marley’s family — wanted “to turn the volume down on.”
“We were trying to find a bit of Bob’s spirit as a human being,” he said in a video interview with NBC News. “That was my instruction from the family and the intention of the movie that’s produced by them.”
Kingsley explained that beyond the legend that captured the imagination of Marley’s fellow Jamaicans — and fans all over the world — they wanted viewers to connect on a deeper human level.
“There’s something about his lifelong journey to spread peace, or find peace for himself, that I feel is very, very universal,” he said. “We’re all on our own journeys trying to feel connected to something.”Kingsley said Marley was able to transmit this profound yearning for a higher sense of connection through the “feeling of his music.”
“Bob Marley: One Love” hits movie theaters nationwide one week after what would have been the reggae star’s 79th birthday. Marley died in 1981, just 36 years old, from a melanoma on his big toenail.
The title of the biopic comes from the hit song “One Love,” which was released on the 1965 debut album by Marley’s original group, The Wailers.
The chorus of “One love. One heart. Let’s get together and feel all right” carries a greater message of unity that director Reinaldo Marcus Green — and Marley’s family — presents in the film, set amid violent political unrest in…
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