Sidibe’s performance, directed by Lee Daniels—the openly gay, African American who was only the second man of color ever to be nominated in the Oscars’ Best Director category—is powerful and impressive, as she modulates Precious’s tentative but dogged growth from a girl cocooned in layers of self-protective mistrust to a young woman open to learning, to love, and to survival. Sidibe captures the spark of fortitude and life that fuels a physically and emotionally abused teenager to make her own way, to strive to be more than her circumstances dictate.