Academy Award-nominated actress Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, currently garnering critical acclaim for her role in Ava DuVernay’s latest film Origin, recently opened up about her decision to change her professional name.

Previously known as Aunjanue Ellis, the actress added the hyphenate “Taylor” to her professional name as a means of honoring her late mother.

“The love of my life, my mother, gave me my Daddy’s name,” she told Variety’s Awards Circuit podcast. “I was like, wait a minute, lady, I want your name. This past birthday, I said, ‘What am I doing? I want to carry her with me every day.’ So, how do I do that and not have to do that on a conscious level? It’s my name.”

Ellis-Taylor is currently garnering rave reviews for her portrayal of Pulitizer Prize winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson in Origin. Based on Wilkerson’s bestselling book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, the film marks Ellis-Taylor’s first instance as a lead in a major motion picture.

During the podcast, Ellis-Taylor also discussed the hurdles it took to get Origin off the ground.

“When a lovely white man wants to tell a story about someone, all they need to offer is their filmmaking abilities,” she says. “When a writer-director like Ava, or an actor like me [wants to do it], there’s an expectation of us that we have to make it relatable and universal. We have to offer hope. And that demand is not made of our contemporaries and our peers.”