Reality TV star White Dee was celebrating today - after her film debut was ranked one of the world's top 50 movies in 2019.
Dee met the director of the film and cast over a packet of fries in the McDonald's on Bristol Road after making an impression on TV shows Benefits Street and Celebrity Big Brother .
The Rotten Tomatoes website, which aggregates reviews from around the world, has given the film Ray & Liz a 95 per cent 'fresh' rating that puts its ahead of five of this year's nine Best Picture Oscar contenders.
White Dee - real name Deirdre Kelly - made her film debut playing the mother of director Richard Billingham in Ray & Liz, the story of his harrowing upbringing as the son of an alcoholic father and obese mother who lived in a tower block flat near Birmingham.
A Kickstarter fund saw 153 backers pledge £20,465 to get the film completed.
Justin Sallinger and Ella Smith play Ray and Liz in most of the scenes, but White Dee also plays the mother when older with Patrick Romer as the older Ray.
A year ago, Richard and producer Jacqui Davies were nominated in the 2019 EE British Academy Film Awards for 'Outstanding debut by a British writer director or producer'.
But the sheer proportion of rave reviews since the film's release has seen Rotten Tomatoes rank Ray & Liz above blockbusters starring Hollywood royalty like Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Christian Bale, Matt Damon, Colin Firth and Joaquin Phoenix.
Mum-of-two Dee told BirminghamLive: "The film has had nothing but positive reviews and done well at various film festivals - but that Rotten Tomatoes' ranking is amazing!
"It was such a personal story for Richard but it was also the story of how many of us grew up. It was such an absolute honour to have been asked to play his mum, it really was.
"You see it in certain children, how they taken something away from the reality of their lives growing up.
"Richard did that through his photos and the film is an absolute credit to him."
How Ray & Liz ranks
Rotten Tomatoes is owned by Fandango, part of Comcast one of the world's biggest broadcast companies.
Every film released is given a Tomatometer score – based on the opinions of hundreds of film and television critics.
When at least 60 per cent of reviews for a movie or TV show are positive, a red tomato is displayed to indicate its Fresh status. A score of less than 60 per cent leads to a 'Rotten' rating.
Ray & Liz was the 49th best-reviewed film (including documentaries) in 2019 around the world - with other films on a 95 per cent rating listed as high as 43rd out of 182 films which had a rating of at least 70 per cent.
Out of his year's nine films nominated as Best Picture contenders for the 2020 Academy Awards, only Korean film Parasite (99 per cent) and Martin Scorsese's The Irishman (96 per cent) were better reviewed.
Also on 95 per cent were two of this year's Oscar hopefuls - Little Women and Marriage Story .
The best picture contenders trailing Ray & Liz (starring White Dee) include Ford v Ferrari (92 per cent and starring Christian Bale and Matt Damon), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (85 per cent and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt), 1917 (89 per cent and starring Colin Firth and George MacKay), Jojo Rabbit (80 per cent and starring Scarlett Johansson and Sam Rockwell) and Joker (69 per cent and starring Joaquin Phoenix and Robert De Niro).
The No 1 film around the world in 2019 according to Rotten Tomatoes' reviews was Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old , which turned previously unseen black and white WWI footage into a coloured film which lip-readers helped to script. It also used audio from survivors.
Nine Oscar contenders - and Ray & Liz
Joker - 69 per cent
JoJo Rabbit - 80 per cent
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - 85 per cent
1917 - 89 per cent
Ford v Ferrari - 92 per cent
Ray & Liz - 95 per cent
Little Women
Marriage Story
The Irishman - 96 per cent
Parasite - 99 per cent
How White Dee got the part
Turner Prize nominee Richard Billingham was brought up in a cramped Cradley Heath tower block council flat with an alcoholic father and obese, heavily tattooed mother.
His candid photographs helped his aspirations to become a painter, but the success of a 1996 photobook called Ray’s A Laugh propelled him into the wider art world and then he decided to bring the pictures to life in a film.
Dee recalls: "I remember meeting Richard and Jacqui at the McDonald's on the Bristol Road.
"To tell you the truth, I kept saying to them: 'I'm not an actress, never wanted to be an actress, never claimed to be an actress... are you sure (you want me)?'.
"And then I went off the play the part of his mum and did four days' shooting.
"All I could think to say was 'I'll give it a go' and they gave me the script.
"I'd just come out of Big Brother and in October was about to go on holiday for the first time in how many years and I just remember them saying to me 'Don't come back with a tan because we're filming in November!'
"Trained actors must know how to learn lines, I'd never done that, but luckily in film you can just do it again.
"Where we filmed was just the most dismal place - the same flats where Richard had spent his childhood."
Since Benefits Street was filmed in 2014, one of the other main 'stars' of the series Fungi (James Clarke) has died - on July 1, 2019.
But Dee is a Sunday morning 'pub quiz' regular on the Foxy and Guiliano show on BBC WM.
Before Christmas, she played the Empress of Brum in Aladdin, a sold-out Mary Stevens Hospice fundraising panto at Stourbridge Town Hall.
Dee is also actively involved in promoting a public Facebook group called Birmingham says NO - to knife crime and serious youth violence
Ray & Liz was directed by Billingham with cinematography by Daniel Landin who had previously worked with Scarlett Johansson (Under The Skin) and Jennifer Aniston (The Yellow Birds).
Part funded by the BFI, with additional help from a Kickstarter campaign , the film was produced by Richard's friend Jacqui Davies, a London-based curator and producer who has been working with artists internationally since 1997.
