Sidibe’s nickname is Gabby… She was born in Brooklyn but raised in Harlem, according to the film’s official site, which also notes that while Sidibe never studied theater, “she has spent time on stage, participating in plays put on by the theater department at Lehman College in the Bronx”… Sidibe is pronounced SIH-dih-bay. It’s a Senegalese name; her father, Ibnou Sidibe, was born in Senegal… The movie Precious is based on the 1996 novel Push by the author Sapphire (the pen name of Ramona Lofton)… Precious is described in the original novel as weighing 350 pounds; this number is sometimes given as Sidibe’s own weight, but that doesn’t seem to be correct.