Sophie Okonedo

If YOU didn't know that the woman playing the role of simple, vulnerable May in the civil rights movement drama "The Secret Life of Bees" isn't Southern, you wouldn't guess it. But then, if you had only seen her playing Don Cheadle's wife in "Hotel Rwanda," you'd think she was African. Yet to hear her tell it, stage-trained Londoner Sophie Okonedo barely knows what she's doing. "You never really know what's going to work for you," she said by phone from London, in her lilting accent.