She garnered global attention for her part in a controversial 2010 film about Barack Obama, but South African actress Cara Lachelle now finds herself back in the headlines -- for a much more felonious reason.
As Reuters is reporting, the 27-year-old Lachelle now faces up to 15 years in jail after Jakarta police found over a gram of crystal methamphetamine during a Friday raid on her apartment. "We captured her in a Jakarta apartment after we arrested four Indonesians carrying guns who used to deal drugs in the area," Baharudin Djafar, Jakarta police spokesman, told Reuters by telephone. Three other suspects were also arrested.
Lachelle is best known for her role in the Indonesian film Obama Anak Menteng, or "Little Obama," about the U.S. President's childhood in Jakarta. She starred as Ann Dunham, Obama's late anthropologist mother who moved to Indonesia with her then six-year-old son in the late 1960s.
Though the controversial film, co-directed by John Rantau and Damien Dematra, is said to be largely fantasy, Lachelle described her character as "so strong, she knew her son would be put through hardship and she helped him through that," according to the Daily Mail. She went on to note, "I am very careful about the way I portray her, to do justice to them both."